


ANTISEMITISM 
JTS HISTORY AND CAUSES 


BERNARD LAZARE 


LIBRARY 


UNIVERSH#TY OF 
CALIFORNIA 


SAN DIEGO 
J 





Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2007 with funding from 
Microsoft Corporation 


http://www.archive.org/details/antisemitismitshOOlazaiala 


IUS 


BERNARD LAZARE, 








ANTISEMITISM, 


ITS HISTORY AND CAUSES. 


TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH. 





PUBLISHED BY 
THE INTERNATIONAL LIBRARY PUBLISHING CO., 
23 DUANE STREET, NEW YORK, 


CopyricHt, 1903, 


By Tue INTERNATIONAL LipraRy PuBLisHiING Co. 


Antisemitism, lts History and Causes. 


Preface. . 


Portions of this book, which at various times ap- 
peared in the newspapers and periodicals, received the 
honor of being noticed and discussed. This has induced 
me to write the few lines that follow. I have been 
charged by some with being an antisemite, by others, 
with exhibiting too great bias in defending the Jews, and 
my writings have been judged either from the anti- 
semitic or the philosemitic standpoint. This is wrong, 
for I am neither an antisemite nor a philosemite; it has 
been my intention to write neither an apology nor a 
diatribe, but an impartial study in history and sociology. 

I do not approve of antisemitism; it is a narrow, 
one-sided view, still I have sought to account for it. It 
was not born without cause, I have searched for its 
causes. Whether I have succeeded in discovering them, 
it is for the reader to decide. 

An opinion as general as antisemitism, which has 
flourished in all countries and in all ages, before and 
after the Christian era, at Alexandria, Rome, and An- 
tiachia, in Arabia, and in Persia, in mediaeval and in 
modern Europe, in a word, in all parts of the world 
wherever there are or have been Jews,—such an opinion, 
it has seemed to me, could not spring from a mere whim 
or fancy, but must be the effect of deep and serious 
causes. 


Re rast 


It has, therefore, been my aim to draw a full-size pic- 
ture of antisemitism, of its history and causes, to fol- 
low its successive changes and transformations. Such a 
study might easily fill volumes. I have, therefore, been 
obliged to limit its scope, confining myself to broad out- 
lines and omitting details. I hope to take up, at no dis- 
tant day, some of its aspects which could only be hinted 
at here, and I shall then endeavor to show what has 
been the intellectual, moral, economic and revolutionary 


role of the Jew in the world. 
THE AUTHOR. 


ANTISEMITISM. 





CHAPTER I. 
GENERAL CAUSES OF ANTISEMITISM. 


Exclusiveness.—The Political and Religious Cult.—Je- 
hovah and the Law.—Civil and Religious Regu- 
lations.—Jewish Colonies—The Talmud.—The 
Chosen People Doctrine.—Jewish Pride.—Separa- 
tion from the Nations.—Pollution.—The Pharisees 
and the Rabbinites.—The Faith, Tradition and Sec- 
ular Science—The Triumph of the Talmudists.— 
Jewish Patriotism.—The Mystic Fatherland.—The 
Restoration of the Kingdom of Israel_—The Isola- 
tion of the Jew. 

To make the history of antisemitism complete, omit- 
ting none of the manifestations of this sentiment and 
following its divers phases and modifications, it is ne- 
cessary to go into the history of Israel since its disper- 
sion, or, more properly speaking, since the beginning of 
its expansion beyond the boundaries of Palestine. 

Wherever the Jews settled after ceasing to be a nation 


a ae 


ready to defend its liberty and independence, one ob- 
serves the development of antisemitism, or rather anti- 
Judaism; for antisemitism is an ill-chosen word, 
which has its raison d’etre only in our day, when it is 
sought to broaden this strife between the Jew and the 
Christians by supplying it with a philosophy and a 
metaphysical, rather than a material reason. If this 
hostility, this repugnance had been shown towards the 
Jews at one time or in one country only, it would be 
easy to account for the local causes of this sentiment. 
But this race has been the object of hatred with all the 
nations amidst whom it ever settled. Inasmuch as the 
enemies of the Jews belonged to divers races; as they 
dwelled far apart from one another, were ruled by differ- 
ent laws and governed by opposite principles; as they 
had not the same customs and differed in spirit from 
one another, so that they could not possibly judge alike 
of any subject, it must needs be that the general causes 
of antisemitism have always resided in Israel itself, 
and not in those who antagonized it. 

This does not mean that justice was always on the side 
of Israel’s persecutors, or that they did not indulge in all 
the extremes born of hatred; it is merely asserted that 
the Jews were themselves, in part, at least, the cause 
of their own ills. 

Considering the unanimity of antisemitic manifes- 
tations, it can hardly be admitted, as had too willingly 
been done, that they were merely due to a religious war, 
and one must not view the strife against the Jews as a 
struggle of polytheism against monotheism, or that 
of the Trinity against Jehovah. The polytheistic, as 


wes yan 


well as the Christian nations combatted not the doctrine 
of one sole God, but the Jew. 


Which virtues or which vices have earned for the 
Jew this universal enmity? Why was he ill-treated and 
hated alike and in turn by the Alexandrians and the 
Romans, by the Persians and the Arabs, by the Turks 
and the Christian nations? Because, everywhere up to 
our own days the Jew was an unsociable being. 


Why was he unsociable? Because he was exclusive, 
and his exclusiveness was both political and religious, or 
rather he held fast to his political and religious cult, to 
his law. 


All through history we see the conquered peoples sub- 
mit to the laws of the conqueror, though they may guard 
their own faith and beliefs. It was easy for them to do 
so, for with them a line was drawn between their relig- 
ious teachings which had come from the gods, and their 
civil laws which emanated from legislation and could 
be modified according to circumstances, without invit- 
ing upon the reformers the theological anathema or ex- 
ecration ; what had been done by man could be undone 
by man. Thus, if the conquered rose up against the 
conquerors, it was through patriotism alone, and they 
were actuated by no other motive but the desire to re- 
gain their land and their liberty. Aside from these 
national uprisings, they seldom took exception to being 
subjected to the general laws; if they protested, it was 
against particular enactments which placed them into 
a position of inferiority towards the dominant people; 
in the history of the Roman conquests we see the con- 


ee A ces 


quered bow to Rome when she extended to them the laws 
which governed the empire. 

Not so with the Jewish people. In fact, as was ob- 
served by Spinoza, “the laws revealed by God to Moses 
were nothing but laws for the special government of 
the Hebrews.” Moses,* the prophet and legislator, as- 
signed the same authority for his judicial and govern- 
mental enactments, as for his religious precepts, 1. ¢., 
revelation. Not only did Yahweh say to the Jews, “Ye 
shall believe in the one God and ye shall worship no 
idols,” he also prescribed for them rules of hygiene and 
morality; not only did he designate the territory where 
sacrifices were to be offered, he also determined the man- 
ner in which that territory was to be governed. Hach 
of the given laws, whether agrarian, civil, prophylactic, 
theological, or moral, proceeded from the same author- 
ity, so that all these codes formed a whole, a rigorous 
system of which naught could be taken away for fear of 
sacrilege. 

In reality, the Jew lived under the rule of a lord, 
Yahweh, who could neither be conquered, nor even as- 
sailed, and he knew but one thing, the law, i. ¢., the col- 
lection of rules and decrees which it had once pleased 
Yahweh to give to Moses,—a law divine and excellent, 
made to lead its followers to eternal bliss; a perfect law 
which the Jewish people alone had received. 

With such an idea of his Torah, the Jew could not 





? Tractatus theologico-politicus. 

*When I say ‘Moses assigned,” it is not to maintain that 
Moses himself elaborated all the laws which pass under his name, 
but merely because he is credited with having revised them. 


SSM nl 


accept the laws of strange nations; nor could he think 
of submitting to them; he could not abandon the divine 
laws, eternal, good and just, to follow human laws, 
necessarily imperfect and subject to decay. If only he 
had been allowed to make one part of this Torah; to 
put on one side all civil ordinances, on the other all 
religious decrees! But had they not all a sacred char- 
acter, and did not the welfare of the Jewish people de- 
pend upon their full observance? 

These civil laws which attached to the people, not to 
municipalities, the Jews would not abandon upon set- 
tling among other nations, for though these laws no 
longer had any justification beyond Jerusalem and the 
Kingdom of Israel, they were none the less religious 
obligations binding upon all the Jews, who, by an an- 
cient covenant with the Deity, had undertaken to fulfill 
them. | 

Thus, wherever colonies were founded by the Jews, to 
whatever land they were deported, they insisted, not only 
upon permission to follow their religion, but also upon 
exemption from the customs of the people amidst whom 
they were to live, and the privileges to govern them- 
selves by their own laws. 

At Rome, at Alexandria, at Antioch, in Cyrenaica 
they were allowed full freedom in the matter. They 
were not required to appear in court on Saturday ;' they 
were even permitted to have their own special tribunals, 
and were not amenable to the laws of the empire; 
when the distribution of grains occurred on a Saturday 





*Cod. Theod., book II, title VIII, §2. Cod. Just., book I, title 
IX, §2. 


eae ee 


their share was reserved for them until the next day ;? 
they could be decurions, being at the same time exempt 
from all practices contrary to their religion*; they en- 
joyed complete self-government, as in Alexandria; they 
had their own chiefs, their own senate, their ethnarch, 
and were not subject to the general municipal authori- 
ties. 

Everywhere they wanted to remain Jews, and every- 
where they were granted the privilege of establishing a 
State within the State. By virtue of these privileges 
and exemptions, and immunity from taxes, they would 
soon rise above the general condition of the citizens of 
the municipalities where they resided; they had better 
opportunities for trade and accumulation of wealth, 
whereby they excited jealousy and hatred. 

Thus, Israel’s attachment to its law was one of the 
first causes of its unpopularity, whether because it de- 
rived from that law benefits and advantages which were 
apt to excite envy, or because it prided itself upon the 
excellence of its Thorah and considered itself above and 
beyond other peoples. 

Still had the Israelites adhered to pure Mosaism, they 
could, doubtless, at some time in their history, have so 
modified that Mosaism as to retain none but the religious 
and metaphysical precepts ; possibly, if they had no other 
sacred book but the Bible they might have merged in 
the nascent church, which enlisted its first followers 
among the Sadducees, the Essenes, and the Jewish prose- 





? Philo, Legat. ad Oai. 
5 Dig., book I, title III, §3. (Decisions by Septimius Severus 
and Caracalla.) 


ers, | eae 


lytes. One thing prevented that fusion and upheld tne 
existence of the Hebrews among the nations; it was the 
growth of the Talmud, the authority and rule of the 
doctors who taught a pretended tradition. The policy 
of the doctors to which we shall return further made 
of the Jews sullen beings, unsociable and haughty, of 
whom Spinoza, who knew them well, could say: “It is 
not at all surprising that after being scattered for so 
many years they have preserved their identity without 
a government of their own, for, by their external rites, 
contrary to those of other nations, as well as by the sign 
of circumcision, they have isolated themselves from all 
other nations, even to the extent of drawing upon them- 
selves the hate of all mankind.”? 

Man’s aim on earth, said the doctors, is the knowledge 
and observance of the law, and one cannot thoroughly ob- 
serve it without denying allegiance to all but the true 
law. The Jew who followed these precepts isolated him- 
self from the rest of mankind ; he retrenched himself be- 
hind the fences which had been erected around the Torah 
by Ezra and the first scribes’, later by the Pharisees and 
the Talmudists, the successors of Ezra, refomers of 
primitive Mosaism and enemies or the prophets. He 
isolated himself, not merely by declining to submit to 
the customs which bound together the inhabitants of 
the countries where he settled, but also by shunning all 
intercourse with the inhabitants themselves. To his un- 
sociability the Jew added exclusiveness. 

With the law, yet without Israel to put it into practice, 





1 Spinoza, Tractatus theologico-politicus. 
1The Dibre Sopherim. 


=— 


the world could not exist, God would turn it back into 
nothing; nor will the world know happiness until it be 
brought under the universal domination of that law, 7. e., 
under the domination of the Jews. Thus the Jewish 
people is chosen by God as the trustee of His will; it 
is the only people with whom the Deity has made a 
covenant ; it is the choice of the Lord. At the time when 
the serpent tempted Eve, says the Talmud, he cor- 
rupted her with his venom. Israel, on receiving the 
revelation from Sinai, delivered itself from the evil; 
the rest of mankind could not recover. Thus, if they 
have each its guardian and its protecting constellation, 
Israel is placed under the very eye of Jehovah; it is the 
Eternal’s favored son who has the sole right to his love, 
to his good will, to his special protection, other. men are 
placed beneath the Hebrews; it is by mere mercy that 
they are entitled to divine munificence, since the souls 
of the Jews alone are descended from the first man. The 
wealth which has come to the nations, in truth belongs 
to Israel, and we hear Jesus Himself reply to the Greek 
woman: “It is not meet to take the children’s bread and 
so cast it unto the dogs.”1 This faith in their pre- 
destination, in their election, developed among the Jews 
an immense pride. It led them to view the Gentiles with 
contempt, often with hate, when patriotic considerations 
supervened to religious feeling. 

When Jewish nationality was in peril, the Pharisees, 
under John Hyrcanus, declared impure the soil of 
strange peoples, as well as all intercourse among Jews 
and Greeks. Later, the Shamaites advocated at a synod 


1 Mark, vii, 27. 





Bieta AG eens 


complete separation of the Jews from the heathens, and 
drafted a set of injunctions, called The KHighteen 
Things, which ultimately prevailed over the opposi- 
tion of the Hillelites. As a result Jewish unsociability 
begins to engage the attention of the councils of Anti- 
ochus Sidetes ; exception is taken to “their persistence in 
shutting themselves up amidst their own kind and avoid- 
ing all intercourse with pagans, and to their eagerness to 
make that intercourse more and more difficult, if not im- 
possible.” And the high priest Menelaus accuses the 
law, before Antiochus Epiphanes, “of teaching hatred of 
the human race, of prohibiting to sit down at the table of 
strangers and to show good-will towards them.” 

If these prescriptions had lost their authority when 
the cause which had produced and, in a way, justified 
them, had disappeared, the evil would not have been 
great. Yet we see them reappear in the Talmud and 
receive a new sanction from the authority of the doctors. 
After the controversy between the Sadducees and the 
Pharisees had terminated in the victory of the latter, 
these injunctions became part of the law, they were 
taught with the law and helped to develop and exagger- 
ate the exclusiveness of the Jews. 

Another fear, that of contamination, separated 
the Jews from the world and made their iso- 
lation still more rigorous. The Pharisees held 
views of extreme rigor on the subject of contamina- 
tion; with them the injunctions and prescriptions of the 
Bible were insufficient to preserve Man from sin. As 
the sacrificial vases were contaminated by the least im- 





*Derembourg, Geographie de la Palestine, 


ote Mige eee 


pure contact, they came to regard themselves contam- 
inated by contact with strangers. Of this fear were born 
innumerable rules affecting every-day life: rules re- 
lating to clothing, dwelling, nourishment, all of which 
were promulgated with a view to save the Israelites from 
contamination and sacrilege; all these rules might prop- 
erly be observed in an independent state or city, but 
could not possibly be enforced in foreign lands, for their 
strict observance would require the Jews to flee the so- 
ciety of Gentiles, and thus to live isolated, hostile to their 
environment. 

The Pharisees and the Rabbinites went still farther. 
Not satisfied with preserving the body, they also sought to 
save the soul. Experience had shown them that Hel- 
lenic and Roman importations imperiled what they 
deemed their faith. The names of the Hellenistic high 
priests, Jason, Menelaus, &c., reminded the Rabbinites 
of the times when the genius of Greece, winning over 
one portion of Israel, came very near conquering it. 
They knew that the Sadducean party, friendly to the 
Greeks, had paved the way for Christianity, as much as 
the Alexandrians and all those who maintained that 
“none but the legal provisions, clearly enunciated in the 
Mosaic law, were binding, whereas all other rules grow- 
ing from local traditions or subsequently issued, could 
lay no claim to rigorous observance.? 

It was under Greek influence that the books and 
oracles originated which prepared the minds for Messiah. 
The Hellenistic Jews, Philo and Aristobulus, the pseudo- 
Phocylides and the pseudo-Longinus, authors of the 


1 Graetz, Histoire des Juifs, b. II, p. 469. 





eer | Mere 


Sibylline oracles and of the pseudo-Orphics, all these 
successors of the prophets who continued their work, led 
mankind to Christ. And it may be said that true Mo- 
saism, purified and enlarged by Isaiah, Jeremiah and 
Ezekiel, broadened and generalized by the Judaeo-Hel- 
lenists, would have brought Israel to Christianity, but 
for Ezraism, Pharisaism and Talmudism, which held the 
mass of the Jews bound to strict observances and nar- 
row ritual practices. 

To guard God’s people, to keep it safe from evil in- 
fluences, the doctors exalted their law above all things. 
They declared that no study but that of the law alone 
became an Israelite, and as a whole life-time was hardly 
sufficient to learn and penetrate all the subtleties and all 
the casuistry of that law, they prohibited the study of ¢ 
profane sciences and foreign languages. ‘Those among 
us who learn several languages are not held in esteem,” 
said Josephus ;' contempt alone was soon thought insuf- 
ficient, they were excommunicated. Nor did these ex- 
pulsions satisfy the Rabbinites. Though deprived of 
Plato, had not the Jew still the Bible, could he not listen 
to the voice of the prophets? As the book could not 
be proscribed, it was belittled and made subordinate to 
the Talmud; the doctors declared: “The law is water, 
the Mishna is wine.” And the reading of the Bible was 
considered less beneficial, less conducive to salvation 
than the reading of the Mishna. 

However, the Rabbinites could not kill Jewish curi- 
osity with one blow; it required centuries. It was as 
late as the fourteenth century, after Ibn Ezra, Rabbi 

1Ant, Jud., xx, 9. 

i 





| 


ea ee 


Bechai, Maimonides, Bedares, Joseph Caspi, Levi Ben 
Gerson, Moses of Narbonne, and many others, were 
gone, all true sons of Philo and the Alexandrians, who 
strove to verify Judaism by foreign philosophy; after 
Asher Ben Yechiel had induced the assembly of the rab- 
bis at Barcelona to excommunicate those who would 
study profane sciences; after Rabbi Shalem, of Mont- 
pellier had complained to the Dominicans of the Moreh 
Nebukhim, and this book, the highest expression of 
the ideas of Maimonides, had been burned ;—it was only 
after all this that the rabbis ultimately triumphed.* 
(~ Their end was attained. They had cut off Israel 


| from the community of nations; they had made of it 
' a sullen recluse, a rebel against all laws, foreign to all 


| 
| 


feeling fraternity, closed to all beautiful, noble and gen- 
erous ideas; they had made of it a small and miserable 
nation, soured by isolation, brutalized by a narrow edu- 
cation, demoralized and corrupted by an unjustifiable 


pride.* 





1The Jewish thought still had a few lights in the fifteenth 
and the sixteenth century. But those among the Jews who pro- 
duced anything mostly took part in the struggle between 
philosophy and religion, and were without influence upon their 
co-religionists ; their existence is therefore no denial of the spirit 
inculcated on the masses by the rabbis. Besides, one meets, 
throughout that period, none but unimportant commentators, 
physicians and translators; there appears no great mind among 
them. One must go as far as Spinoza to find a Jew truly capa- 
ble of high ideas; it is well known how the Synagogue treated 
Spinoza. a 

1“Tnsolentia Judaeorum,” spoken of by Agobard, Amolon and 
the polemists of the Middle Ages means nothing but the pride 
of the Jews, who consider themselves the chosen people. This 
expression has not the sense forced into it by modern antisem- 
ites, who, it may be noted, are poor historians. i 


egy | ee 


With this transformation of the Jewish spirit and the 


victory of sectarian doctors, coincides the beginning of f 


official persecution. Until that epoch there had only 
been outbursts of local hatred, but no systematic vexa- 
tions. With the triumph of the Rabbinites, the ghettos 
come into being. The expulsions and massacres com- 
mence. The Jews want to live apart,—a line is drawn 
against them. ‘They detest the spirit of the nations 
amidst whom they live,—the nations chase them. They 
burn the Moreh,—their Talmud is burned and they 
themselves are burned with it.’ 

It would seem that no further agency was needed to 
render the separation of the Jews from the rest of man- 
kind complete and to make them an object of horror and 
reprobation. Still another cause must be added to those 
just mentioned: the indomitable and tenacious patriot- 
ism of Israel. 

Certainly, every people was attached to the land of its 
birth. Conquered, beaten by the conquerors, driven into 
exile or forced into slavery, they remained true to the 
sweet memories of their plundered city or the country 
they had lost. Still none other knew the patriotic en- 
thusiasm of the Jews. The Greek, whose city was de- 
stroyed, could elsewhere build anew the hearth upon 
which his ancestors bestowed their blessings ; the Roman 





The Roman laws, the Visigothic ordinances and those of the 
Councils will probably be cited; yet nearly all these measures 
proceeded principally from Jewish proselytism. It was not until 
the thirteenth century that the Jews were radically and officially 
separated from the Christians, by ghettos, by symbols of infamy 
(the hat, the cape, etc.). See Ulysse Robert, Les Signes d’infa- 
mie au moyevage. (Paris, 1891.) 


— 


Se OO ea 


who went into exile took along with him his penates; 
Athens or Rome had nothing of the mystic fatherland 
like Jerusalem. 

Jerusalem was the guardian of the Tabernacle which 
received the divine word; it was the city of the only 
Temple, the only place in the world where God could 
efficiently be worshipped and sacrifices offered to Him. 
It was only much later, at a very late day, that prayer 
houses were erected in other towns of Juda, or Greece, 
or Italy; still in those houses they confined themselves 
to the reading of the law and theological discussion ; 
the pomp of Jehovah was known nowhere but at Jeru- 
salem, the chosen sanctuary. When a temple was built 
at Alexandria, it was considered heretical ; indeed, the 
ceremonies which were celebrated there had no sense, 
for they ought not to be performed anywhere but in a 
true temple; so St. Chrysostome, after the dispersion 
of the Jews and the destruction of their city, was justi- 
fied in saying: “The Jews offer sacrifices in all parts of 
the earth except there where the sacrifice is permitted 
and valid, %. e., at Jerusalem.” 

With the Hebrews the air of Palestine is the best; it 
is sufficient to make a man learned ;! its holiness is such 
that whoever resides beyond its limits is as if he had no 
God.? Therefore one must not live elsewhere, and the 
Talmud threatens with excommunication those who 
would eat the passover lamb in a foreign land. 

All Jews of the period of dispersion sent to Jerusalem 
the didrachm tax for the maintenance of the temple; 





1Talmud, Bava Bathra, 158, 2. 
? Talmud, Kethuvoth. 


pa bee; ares 


once in their lives they came to the holy city, as later 
the Mohammedans came to Mecca; after their death they 
were carried to Palestine, and numerous craft anchored 
at the coast, loaded with small coffins which were thence 
forwarded on camel’s back. 

It was because in Jerusalem only, in the land given 
by God to their ancestors, their bodies would be resur- 
rected. There those who had believed in Yahweh, who 
had observed his law and obeyed his word, would awake 
at the sound of the last trumpet and appear before their 
Lord. Nowhere but there could they rise at the ap- 
pointed hour; every other land but that washed by the 
yellow Jordan was a vile land, fouled by idolatry, de- 
prived of God. 

When the fatherland was dead, when adversity was 
sweeping Israel all over the world, after the Temple 
had perished in flames, and when the heathens occupied 
the holiest ground, mourning over bygone days became 
everlasting in the soul of the Jew. It was over; they 
could no longer hope to see on the day of mercy the 
black buck carry away their sins into the desert, neither 
could they see the lamb killed for the passover night, 
or bring their offerings to the altar; and, deprived of 
Jerusalem during life, they would not be brought there 
after death. 

God ought not to abandon his children, reasoned the 
pious; and naive legends came to comfort the exiles. 
Near the tombs of the Jews who die in exile, they said, 
Jehovah opens long caverns through which the corpses 
roll as far as Palestine, whereas the pagan who dies 
there, near the consecrated hills, is removed from the 


00 eee 


chosen land, for he is unworthy 0: remaining there 
where the resurrection will take place. 

Still that did not satisfy them. They did not resign 
themselves to visiting Jerusalem merely as pitiable pil- 
grims, weeping before the ruined walls, many of them so 
maddened by grief as to let themselves be trampled upon 
by horses’ hoofs, embracing the ground while moaning ; 
they could not believe that God, that the blessed city 
had abandoned them; with Judah Levita they ex- 
claimed: “Zion, hast thou forgotten thy unfortunate 
children who groan in slavery?” 

They expected that their Lord would by his mighty 
right hand raise the fallen walls; they hoped that a 
prophet, a chosen one, would bring them back to the 
promised land; and how many times, in the course of 
ages, have they left their homes, their fortunes,—they 
who are reproached of being too much attached to 
worldly goods,—in order to follow a false Messiah who 
undertook to lead them and promised them the return 
so much longed for! Thousands were attracted by Sere-. 
nus, Moses of Crete, Alroi, and massacred in the ex- 
pectation of the happy day. 

With the Talmudists these sentiments of popular en- 
thusiasm, this mystic heroism underwent a transforma- 
tion. The doctors taught the restoration of the Jewish 
empire; in order that Jerusalem might be born anew 
from its ruins, they wanted to preserve the people of 
Israel pure, to prevent them from mixing with other 
people, to inculcate on them the idea that they were 
everywhere in exile, amidst enemies that held them cap- 
tive. They said to their disciples: “Do not cultivate 


ee: eee 


strange lands, soon you will cultivate your own; do not 
attach yourself to any land, for thus will you be unfaith- 
ful to the memory of your native land; do not submit to 
any king, for you have no master but the Lord of the 
Holy Land, Jehovah; do not scatter amongst the na- 
tions, you will forfeit your salvation and you will not see 
the light of the day of resurrection ; remain such as you 
left your house; the hour will come and you will see 
again the hills of your ancestors, and those hills will then 
be the centre of the world, which will be subject to your 
power.” 

Thus all those complex sentiments which had in olden 
days served to build up the hegemony of Israel, to main- 
tain its character as a nation, to develop a high and 
powerful originality, all those virtues and vices which 
gave it the spirit and countenance necessary to pre- 
serve a nation; which enabled it to attain greatness and 
later to defend its independence with desperate valor 
worthy of admiration ; all that, after the Jews had ceased 
to be a State, combined to shut them up in. the most 
complete, the most absolute isolation. 

This isolation has been their strength, in the opinion 
of some apologists. If they mean to say that owing to it [ 
the Jews have survived, so much is true; if the condi- 
tions are considered, however, under which the Jews 
have preserved their identity as a people, it is obvious 
that this isolation has been their weakness, and that 
they have survived up to modern times, as a race of 
pariahs, persecuted, often martyred. Moreover, it is 
not only to their seclusion that they owe this surprising 
persistence. Their extraordinary solidarity, due to their 


see 3 Oey toe 


misfortunes, and mutual support count for very much; 
and even in our day, when they take part in public life 
in some countries, having abandoned their sectarian 
dogmas, this very solidarity prevents them from dissoly- 
ing and disappearing as a people, by conferring upon 
ythem certain benefits to which they are by no means 
i indifferent. 

This solicitude for worldly goods, which is a marked 
feature of the Hebrew character, has not been without 
effect upon the conduct of the Jews, especiaily since they 
left Palestine; by directing them along certain avenues, 
to the exclusion of all others, this feature of their char- 
acter has drawn upon them the most violent animosities. 
The soul of the Jew is twofold: it is both mystic and 
positive. His mysticism has come down from the theo- 
phanies of the desert to the metaphysical dreaming of the 
kabbala; his positivism, or rather his rationalism, mani- 
fests itself in the sentences of the Ecclesiastes as well as 
the legislative enactments of the rabbis and the dog- 
matic controversies of the theologians. Still if mysticism 
leads to a Philo or Spinoza, rationalism leads to the 
usurer, the weigher of gold; it creates the greedy trader. 
It is true that at times these two states of the mind 
are found in just opposition, and the Israelite, as it 
occurred in the middle ages, can split his life into two 
parts: one devoted to meditation on the Absolute, the 
other to business. 

Of the Jewish love for gold, there can be no question 
here. Though it may have grown so abnormal with this 
race as to have become well-nigh the only motive of their 
actions, though it may have engendered a violent and 


Sas OR» ee 


exasperated antisemitism, yet it cannot be classed among 
the general causes of antisemitism. It was, on the con- 
trary, the effect of those very causes, and we shall see \) 
that it is partly the exclusiveness, the persistent patriot- 
ism and pride of Israel, that has driven it to become 
the hated usurer of the whole world. 

In fact, all the causes we have just enumerated, if they 
be general, are not the only ones. I have called them 
general, because they depend upon one constant element : 
the Jew. Still the Jew is only one of the factors of anti- 
semitism ; he provokes it by his presence, but he is not 
the only one that determines it. The nations among 
whom the Israelites have lived, their manners, their cus- 
toms, their religion, the philosophy even of the nations 
in whose midst Israel has developed, determine the par- 
ticular character of antisemitism, which changes with 
time and place. 

We shall trace these modifications and variations of 
antisemitism through the course of ages down to our 
epoch ; and we shall examine whether, in some countries 
at least, the general causes I have attempted to deduce 
are still operating, or whether the reasons for modern 
antisemitism must not be sought elsewhere. 


CHAPTER II. 
ANTI-JUDAISM IN ANTIQUITY. 


The Hykos.—Haman.—Antisemitism in Ancient Soci- 
ety.—In Egypt, Manetho, Chaeremon, Lysimachus. 
—Antisemitism at Alexandria.—The Stoics: Posi- 
donius, Apollonius Molo.—Apion, Josephus and 
Philo.—“Treatise Against the Jews,” the “Contra 
Apionem,” and the “Legation to Caius.”—The 
Jews at Rome—Roman Antisemitism.—Cicero, 
Disciple of Apion, and Pro Flacco.—Persius, Ovid 
and Petronius.—Pliny, Suetonius and Juvenal.— 
Seneca and the Stoics—Government Measures.— 
Antisemitism at Antioch and in Ionia.—Antisemit- 
ism and Antichristianity. 

Modern antisemites who are in quest of sires for 
themselves, unhesitatingly trace the first demonstrations 
against the Jews back to the days of ancient Egypt. For 
that purpose they are particularly pleased to refer to 
Genesis, xlili, 32, where it is said: “The Egyptians 
might not eat bread with the Hebrews; for that it is an 
abomination unto the Egyptians.” They also rely upon a 
few verses of the Exodus, among them the following: 
“Behold, the people of the children of Israel are more 
and mightier than we; come on, let us deal wisely with 
them, lest they multiply.” (Exodus, i, 9, 10.) 

It is certain that the sons of Jacob who came to the 
land of Goshen under the Shepherd Pharaoh Aphobis, 


ee) 


were treated by the Egyptians with the same contempt 
as their brothers, the Hyksos, referred to in _hiero- 
glyphic texts as lepers, called also “plague” and “pest” 
in some inscriptions.t. They arrived at that very epoch 
when a very strong national sentiment manifested itself 
against the Asiatic invaders, hated for their cruelty; 
this sentiment soon led to the war of independence, 
which resulted in the final victory of Ahmos I., and the 
enslavement of the Hebrews. However, unless one is 
a violent anti-Jew, it is impossible to perceive in those 
remote disturbances anything beyond a mere incident 
in a struggle between conquerors and conquered. 


There is no antisemitism until the Jews, having 
abandoned their native land, settle as immigrants in 
foreign countries and come into contact with natives or 
older settlers, whose customs, race and religion are dif- 
ferent from those of the Hebrews. 


Accordingly, the history of Haman and Mordecai 
may be taken as the beginning of antisemitism, and the 
antisemites have not failed so to do. This view is, 
perhaps, more correct. Though the historical reality 
of the book of Esther can scarcely be relied upon, still 
it is worthy of note that its author puts into the mouth 
of Haman some of the complaints, which, at a later 
period, are uttered by Tacitus and other Latin writers. 
“And Haman said unto the king, Ahasuerus: there is a 
certain people scattered abroad and dispersed among the 
people in all the provinces of thy kingdom; and their 








‘Inscription of Aahmes, chief of the mariners, cited in Le- 
drain’s Histoire du peuple d’Israel, I, p. 53. 


sa A Ce 


laws are diverse from all people; neither keep they the 
king’s laws.” (Esther, iii, 8.) 

The pamphleteers of the middle ages, of the sixteenth 
and seventeenth centuries, and of our own time, say 
nothing else; and if the history of Haman is apocryphal, 
which is highly probable, still it cannot be denied that 
the author of the Book of Esther has very ably brought 
out some of the causes, which for many centuries ex- 
posed the Jews to the hatred of nations. 

Yet we must go to the period of Jewish expansion 
abroad, to be enabled to observe with certainty that hos- 
tility against them, which by a peculiar misuse of terms 
has in our days been called antisemitism. 

Some traditions refer the entrance of the Jews into 
the ancient world to the epoch of the first captivity. 
While Nabu-Kudur-Ussur led away to Babylonia 
a portion of the Jewish people, many of the Israelites, to 
escape from the conqueror, fled to Egypt, to Tripoli, and 
reached the Greek colonies. Tradition brings back to 
the same period the arrival of the Jews in China and 
India. 

Historically, however, the wanderings of the Jews 
across the globe commence in the fourth century before 
our era. About 331 B. C. Alexander transported some 
Jews to Alexandria, Ptolemy sent some of them to 
Cyrenaica, and about the same time Seleucus led some 
of them to Antioch. When Jesus was born Jewish col- 
onies flourished everywhere, and it was among them that 
Christianity recruited its first adherents. There were 
Jews in Egypt, in Pheenicia, in Syria, in Coele-Syria, 
in Pamphylia, in Cilicia, and as far as Bithynia. In 


Ee ae 


Europe they had settled in Thessalia, Boeotia, Mace- 
donia, Attica and Peloponnesus. They were to be 
found in the Great Isles, on Euboea, on Crete, on Cyprus, 
and at Rome. “It is not easy to find a place on earth,” 
says Strabo, “which has not received that race.” 

Why were the Jews hated in all those countries, in all 
those cities? Because they never entered any city as 
citizens, but always as a privileged class. Though hav- 
ing left Palestine, they wanted above all to remain Jews, 
and their native country was still Jerusalem, 1. ¢., the 
only city where God might be worshipped and sacrifices 
offered in His Temple. They formed everywhere repub- 
lics, as it were, united with Judea and Jerusalem, and 
from every place they remitted monies to the high priest 
in payment of a special tax for the maintenance of the 
Temple—the didrachm. 

Moreover, they separated themselves from other in- 
habitants by their rites and their customs; they consid- 
ered the soil of foreign nations impure and sought to 
constitute themselves in every city into a sort of a 
sacred territory. They lived apart, in special quarters, 
secluded among themselves, isolated, governing them- 
selves by virtue of privileges which were jealously 
guarded by them, and excited the envy of their neigh- 
bors. They intermarried amongst themselves and enter- 
tained no strangers, for fear of pollution. The mystery 
with which they surrounded themselves excited curiosity 
as well as aversion. Their rites appeared strange and 
gave occasion for ridicule; being unknown, they were 
misrepresented and slandered. 

At Alexandria they were quite numerous. According 


moa), pene 


to Philo,? Alexandria was divided into five wards. Two 
were inhabited by the Jews. The privileges accorded to 
them by Caesar were engraved on a column and guarded 
by them as a precious treasure. They had their own 
Senate with exclusive jurisdiction in Jewish affairs, and 
they were judged by an ethnarch. They were ship-own- 
ers, traders, farmers, most of them wealthy ; the sumptu- 
ousness of their monuments and synagogues bore witness 
to it. The Ptolemies made them farmers of the reve- 
nues; this was one of the causes of popular hatred 
against them. Besides, they had a monopoly of naviga- 
tion on the Nile, of the grain trade and of provisioning 
Alexandria, and they extended their trade to all the proy- 
inces along the Mediterranean coast. They accumulated 
great fortunes ; this gave rise to the invidia aurit Judaici. 
The growing resentment against these foreign cornerers, 
constituting a nation within a nation, led to popular dis- 
turbances ; the Jews were frequently assaulted, and Ger- 
manicu, among others, had great trouble protecting 
them. 

The Egyptians took revenge upon them by deriding 
their religious customs, their abhorrence of pork. They 
once paraded in the city a fool, Carabas by name, 
adorned with a papyrus diadem, decked in a royal 
gown, and they saluted him as king of the Jews. Under 
Philadelphus, one of the first Ptolemies, Manetho, the 
high-priest of the Temple at Heliopolis, lent his au- 
thority to the popular hatred; he considered the Jews 
descendants of the Hyksos usurpers, and said that that 
leprous tribe had been expelled for sacrilege and im- 


1In Flaccum. 





oe AG: Pees 


piousness. Those fables were repeated by Cheremon 
and Lysimachus. It was not only popular animosity, 
however that persecuted the Jews; they had also against 
them the Stoics and the Sophists. The Jews, by their 
proselytism, interfered with the Stoics; there was a 
rivalry for influence between them, and, notwithstand- 
ing their common belief in divine unity, there was 
opposition between them. The Stoics charged the Jews 
with irreligiousness, judging by the sayings of Posidon- 
ius and Apollonius Molo; they had a very scant knowl- 
edge of the Jewish religion. The Jews, they said, refuse 
to worship the gods; they do not consent to bow even 
before the divinity of the emperor. They have in their 
sanctuary the head of an ass and render homage to it; 
they are cannibals; every year they fatten a man and 
sacrifice him in a grove, after which they divide among 
themselves his flesh and swear on it to hate strangers. 
“The Jews, says Apollonius Molo, are enemies of al] 
mankind; they have invented nothing useful, and they 
are brutal.” To this Posidonius adds: “They are the 
worst of all men.” 

Not less than the Stoics did the Sophists detest the 
Jews. But the causes of their hatred were not religious, 
but, I should say, rather literary. From Ptolemy Phi- 
ladelphus, until the middle of the third century, the 
Alexandrian Jews, with the intent of sustaining and 
strengthening their propaganda, gave themselves to forg- 
ing all texts which were capable of lending support to 
their cause. The verses of Aeschylus, of Sophocles, of 
Euripides, the pretended oracles of Orpheus, preserved in 
Aristobulus and the Stromata of Clement of Alexandria 


oe, One 


were thus made to glorify the one God and the Sabbath. 
Historians were falsified or credited with the authorship 
of books they had never written. It is thus that a His- 
tory of the Jews was published under the name of Hec- 
ataeus of Abdera. The most important of these inven- 
tions was the Sibylline oracles, a fabrication of the 
Alexandrian Jews, which prophesied the future advent 
of the reign of the one God. They found imitators, 
however, for since the Sibyl had begun to speak, in the 
second century before Christ, the first Christians also 
made her speak. The Jews would appropriate to them- 
selves even the Greek literature and philosophy. In a 
commentary on the Pentateuch, which has been pre- 
served for us by Eusebius,t Aristobulus attempted to 
show that Plato and Aristotle had found their metaphys- 
ical and ethical ideas in an old Greek translation of the 
Pentateuch. The Greeks were greatly incensed at such 
treatment of their literature and philosophy, and out of 
revenge they circulated the slanderous stories of Mane- 
tho, adapting them to those of the Bible, to the great 
fury of the Jews; thus the confusion of languages was 
identified with the myth of Zeus robbing the animals of 
their common language. The Sophists, wounded by the 
conduct of the Jews, would speak against them in their 
teaching. One among them, Apion, wrote a Treat- 
ise against the Jews. This Apion was a peculiar indi- 
vidual, a liar and babbler, to a degree uncommon even 
among rhetors, and full of vanity, which earned him 
from Tiberius the nickname of “Cymbalum mundi.” 
His stories were famous; he claimed to have called out, 





1 Preparatio Hvangelica. 


CS 64 


by means of magic herbs, the shade of Homer, says 
Pliny: 

Apion repeated in his Treatise against the 
Jews the stories of Manetho, which had been previously 
restated by Chaeremon and Lysimachus, and supple- 
mented them by quoting from Posidonius and Apollo- 
nius Molo. According to him, Moses was “nothing but 
a seducer and wizard,” and his laws contained “nothing 
but what is bad and dangerous.”? 

As to the Sabbath, the name was derived, he said, from 
a disease, a sort of an ulcer, with which the Jews were 
afflicted, and which the Egyptians called sabbatosim, 
i. e., disease of the groins. 

Philo and Josephus undertook the defense of the Jews 
and fought the Sophists and Apion. In Contra Ap- 
tonem, Josephus is very severe on his adversary. 
“Apion,” says he, “is as stupid as an ass and as impru- 
dent as a dog, which is one of the gods of his nation.” 
Philo, on the other hand, prefers to attack the Sophists 
in general, and if he mentions Apion at all, in his Lega- 
tio ad Caium, it is merely because Apion was sent to 
Rome to prefer charges against the Jews before Caligula. 

In his Treatise on Agriculture he draws a very black 
picture of the Sophists, and insinuates that Moses has 
compared them to hogs. Nevertheless, in his other writ- 
ings, he advises his co-religionists not to irritate them, so 
as to avoid all provocation to disturbances, but to await 
patiently their chastisement, which will come on the day 
the Jewish Empire, the empire of salvation, will be es- 
tablished on earth. 


* Josephus, Contra Apionem, book II, ch. 6. 








Philo’s injunctions were not heeded; the exasperation 
on both sides often led to violent riots and massacres 
of Jews; the latter, however, valiantly defended them- 
selves.? 

At Rome the Jews had a powerful and wealthy colony 
as early as the first year of the Christian era. If Vale- 
rius Maximus may be trusted, they first came to the city 
about 139 B. C., during the consulate of Popilius Loenus 
and Cajus Calpwinius.” 

Certain it is that, in 160 B. C., an embassy from Judas 
Maccabee arrived in Rome to negotiate an alliance. with 
the Republic against the Syrians; other embassies fol- 
lowed, in 143 and in 139.1 

Tke settlement of the Jews at Rome probably dates 
from that time. Under Pompey they came in num- 
tant factor in politics. Caesar availed himself of their 
support during the civil wars and lavished favors upon 
bers, and as early as 58 B. C., they had quite a settle- 
ment. ‘Turbulent and formidable, they were an impor- 
them; he even granted them exemption from military 
service. Under Augustus the distribution of free bread 
was postponed for them whenever it fell due on Saturday. 
The Emperor gave them permission to collect the did- 
rachm which was sent to Palestine, and he ordered the 
sacrifice of one or two lambs to be offered in his behalf at 
the Temple of Jerusalem for all time to come. When 





1 Philo, In Flaccum. 
? Valerius Maximus, I, 3, 2. 
1 Maccab. viii., 11, 17-32; xii, 1-3; xiv, 16-19, 24.—Josephus, 


Antiqu. Jud.. xii, 110; xiii, 5, 7, 9 Mai script. vet., 111, part 
8, p. 998, 


pete BRE as 


Tiberius became emperor, there were at Rome 20,000 
Jews, who were organized in colleges and sodalitates. 

Except the Jews of prominent families, like the Her- 
ods and the Agrippas, who mixed in public life, the Jew- 
ish masses lived in retirement. The majority resided in 
the dirtiest and busiest quarter of the city, the Transti- 
berinus. They were to be seen near the Via Portuensis, 
the Emporium and the great Circus, in the Campus 
Martius, and in Suburra, beyond the Capenian Gate, on 
the banks of the Egerian Creek, and near the sacred 
grove. They were engaged in retail trade and the sale 
of second-hand goods; those at the Capenian Gate were 
fortune tellers. The Jew of the Ghetto is already there. 

At Rome the same causes were at work as at Alexan- 
dria. There, also, the excessive privileges of the Jews, 
the wealth of some of them, as well as their unheard-of 
luxury and ostentation, excited popular hatred. This 
resentment was aggravated by deeper and more impor- 
tant reasons of a religious character; it may even be 
maintained, strange as it may seem, that the motive of 
Roman anti-Judaism was religious. 

The Roman religion resembled in nothing the admir- 
able and profoundly symbolic polytheism of the Greeks. 
It was ritual rather than mythical; it consisted of cus- 
toms closely connected with the doings of everyday life, 
as well as with all sorts of public acts. Rome was one 
body with its gods; its greatness was bound, as it were, 
with the rigorous observance of the practices of their 
national religion; its glory depended upon the piety of 
its citizens, and it seems that the Roman must have had, 
like the Jew, that notion of a covenant between the dei- 


eta ee 


ties and himself, which was to be scrupulously lived up 
to by both parties. Somehow or other, the Roman was 
always in the presence of his gods; he left his hearth, 
where they abode, only to find them again in the Forum, 
on the public highways, in the Senate, even in the fields, 
where they kept watch over the power of Rome. At all 
times and on all occasions sacrifices were offered; the 
warriors and the diplomats were guided by auguries, and 
all authority, civil as well as military, partook of the 
priesthood, for the officer could not perform his duties 
unless he knew the rites and observances of the cult. 


It was this cult that for centuries sustained the Re- 
public, and its commandments were faithfully obeyed; 
when they were changed, when the traditions became 
adulterated, when the rules were violated, Rome saw its 
glory fade, and its agony commenced. 


Thus the Roman religion preserved itself for a long 
time without change. True, Rome was familar with 
foreign cults ; she saw the worshippers of Isis and Osiris, 
those of the great Mother and those of Sabazius; still, 
though admitting them into her Pantheon, she gave 
them no place in her national religion. All these Orien- 
tals were tolerated ; the citizens were allowed to practice 
their superstitions, provided they were harmless; but 
when Rome perceived that a new faith was subversive of 
the Roman spirit, she was pitiless, as in the case of the 
conspiracy of the Bacchantes, or the expulsion of Egyp- 
tian priests. Rome guarded herself against the foreign 
spirit; she feared affiliation with religious societies ; she 
was afraid even of Greek philosophers, and the Senate, 


pace FAY es 


in 161, upon the report of the praetor Marcus Pom- 
ponius, barred them from entering the city. 

From this, one may understand the feeling of the 
Romans toward the Jews. Greeks, Asiatics, Egyptians, 
Germans, or Gauls, while bringing with them their rites 
and beliefs, made no objection to bowing before Mars 
of the Palatine, or even before Jupiter Latiaris. They 
conformed, within certain limits, to the rules of the city, 
to its religious customs; at all events, they showed no 
opposition. Not so the Jews. They brought with them 
a religion as rigid, as ritualistic, as intolerant, as the 
Roman religion. Their worship of Yahweh excluded all 
other worship; thus they shocked their fellow citizens 
by refusing to swear to the eagles, whereas the eagle was 
the deity of the legion. As their religious faith was 
blended with the observance of certain social laws, the 
adoption of this faith was pregnant with a change of the 
social order. Therefore the Romans were worried by its 
establishment in their midst, for the Jews were eager to 
make proselytes. 

The proselytic spirit of the Jews is attested by all the 
historians, and Philo justly says: “Our customs win over 
and convert the barbarians and the Hellenes, the conti- 
nent and the isles, the Orient and the Occident, Europe 
and Asia, the whole world, from end to end.” 

The ancient nations, at their decline, were deeply at- 
tracted by Judaism, by its dogma of divine unity, by its 
morals; many of the poor people were attracted by the 
privileges accorded to the Jews. These proselytes were 
divided into two great classes: those who accepted the 
circumcision and thereby entered into the Jewish com- 


ae aes 


munity, thus becoming strangers to their families, and 
those who, without complying with the requisites for ad- 
mission to the community, nevertheless gathered around 
it. 

These conversions, generally by suasion and at times 
by force, as when the rich Jews converted their slaves, 
were bound to create a reaction. It was this chief cause, 
together with the secondary causes previously referred 
to, viz., the wealth of the Jews, their political influence, 
their privileged condition, that led to anti-Judaic dem- 
onstrations at Rome. The majority of Roman and Greek 
writers from Cicero on bear witness to this state of 
mind. 

Cicero, who was a disciple of Apollonius Molo, inher- 
ited his teacher’s prejudices; he found the Jews in his 
way: they were with the popular party against the party 
of the Senate, to which he belonged. He feared them, 
and we can see from some passages of Pro Flacco, that 
he hardly dared to speak of them, so numerous were they 
around him and in the public place. Nevertheless, one 
day he burst forth. “Their barbarous superstitions must 
be fought,” says he; he accuses them of being a nation 
“given to suspicion and slander,” and proceeds by saying 
that they “show contempt for the splendor of the Roman 
power,”’? ‘They were to be feared, according to him— 
those men who, detaching themselves from Rome, turned 
their eyes towards the far away city, that Jerusalem, 
and supported it by denaries which they drew from the 
Republic. Moreover, he reproached them for winning 
citizens over to the Sabbatarian rites. 





1 Pro Flacco. 


rome ee 


It is this last charge that recurs most frequently in 
the writings of the polemists, the poets and the histo- 
rians. The Jewish religion, which charmed those who 
had penetrated its essence, was repulsive to others who 
had a scant knowledge of it and regarded it as a heap 
of absurd and dismal rites. The Jews are nothing but 
a superstitious nation, says Persius'; their Sabbath is a 
lugubrious day, adds Ovid?; they worship the hog and 
the ass, affirms Petronius’. 

Tacitus, well informed as he is, repeats, with regard 
to Judaism, the fables of Manetho and Posidonius. The 
Jews, says he, are descended from lepers, they honor the 
head of an ass, they have infamous rites. He further 
specifies his charges, which, one would say, are those of 
modern French Nationalists: “All those who embrace 
their faith,” says he, “undergo circumcision, and the first 
instruction they receive is to despise the gods, to for- 
swear their country, to forget father, mother and chil- 
dren.” And he warms up by saying: “The Jews consider 
as profane all that is held sacred with us.”? Suetonius 
and Juvenal repeat the same thing; the principal charge 
reads: “They have a particular cult and particular laws ; 
they despise the Roman laws.”! This is likewise the 
complaint of Pliny: “They despise the gods.’ . 

Seneca has the same grudge, still with the philoso- 
pher other motives supervene: There was a rivalry be- 





2 Sat. Vv: 
? Ars amatoria, I, 75, 76. 
1Fragm. poet. 

*Tac., Hist., v. 4, 5. 
TJuvenal, Sat., xiv, 96, 104. 
? Hist. nat., xiii 4. 


tween Seneca, the Stoic, and the Jews, the same as there 
had been between the Stoics and the Jews at Alexandria. 
He quarrelled less with their contempt of the gods than 
with their proselytism which thwarted the spread of the 
doctrine of the Stoics. He thus gives expression to his 
displeasure: “The Romans,” says he regretfully, “have 
adopted the Sabbath.”? And, further speaking of the 
Jews, he says in conclusion: “This abominable nation 
has succeeded in spreading its usages throughout the 
whole world ; the conquered have given their laws to the 
conquerors.” Seneca’s view was in accord with the atti- 
tude of both the Republic and the Empire, by which 
measures were adopted from time to time to check Jew- 
ish proselytism. UnderTiberius,in the year 22,a senatus- 
consult was directed against the Egyptian and Judaic 
superstitions and four thousand Jews, says Tacitus, were 
deported to Sardinia. Caligula subjected them to vexa- 
tious persecution ; he encouraged the doings of Flaccus in 
Egypt, and Flaccus, sustained by the Emperor, robbed 
the Jews of the privileges granted to them by Cesar; he 
took away from them their synagogue and directed that 
they might be treated as inhabitants of a captured city. 
Domitian imposed a special tax upon Jews and those 
who led a Judaic life, hoping by the levy of the tax to 
stop conversions, and Antoninus Pius prohibited the 
Jews from circumcising others than their sons. 
Anti-Judaism manifested itself not only at Rome and 
Alexandria, but wherever there were vews: at Antioch, 
where great massacres occurred ; in Lybia, where, under 





1 Hpistle xv. 
? De superstitione, fragm. xxxvi. 


ek 


Vespasian, the governor Catullus stirred up the populace 
against them; in Ionia, where, under Augustus, the 
Greek cities, by an understanding among themselves, 
forced the Jews either to renounce their faith or to bear 
the entire burden of public expenditures. 

Yet it is impossible to speak of the persecution of the 
Jews without speaking of the persecution of the Chris- 
tians. For a long time Jews and Christians, these 
hostile brothers, were included in the same contempt, 
and the same causes which made the Jews hateful made 
the Christians hateful as well. The disciples of the 
Nazarene brought into the ancient world the same deadly 
principles. If the Jews taught the people to leave their 
gods, to abandon husband, father, child and wife, and to 
come to Jehovah, Jesus also said: “I have not come to 
unite, but to separate.” The Christians, like the Jews, 
refused to bow to the eagle; like the Jews they would not 
lie prostrate before idols. Like the Jews, the Christians 
knew another country than Rome; like the Jews, they 
would be oblivious of their civic, rather than their re- 
ligious duties. 

Thus, during the first years of the Christian era, the 
Synagogue and the ancient Church were despised alike. 
Simultaneously with the Jews “a certain chrestus”? and 
his followers were driven from Rome. Each side en- 
deavored to convince the people that it ought not to be 
mistaken for the other, and no sooner did Christianity 
make itself heard than it rejected, in its turn, the 
descendants of Abraham. 





1 Suetonius, Claud., 25. 


CHAPTER III. 


ANTI-JUDAISM IN CHRISTIAN ANTIQUITY FROM THE 
FOUNDATION OF THE CHURCH OF CONSTANTINE. 


The Church and the Synagogue.—Jewish Privileges and 
the First Christians—Jewish Hostility—Judaic 
Patriotism.—Christian Proselytism and the Rabbis. 
—Attacks upon Christianity—The Apostates and 
Maledictions.—Stephen and James.—Jewish Influ- 
ence Contested.—Christianity Among the Pagans 
and Among the Jews.—Peter and Paul.—Judaiz- 
ing Heresies—The Ebionites, the Elkasaites, the 
Nazarenes, the Quartodecimans.—Gnosticism and 
Jewish Alexandrinism.—Simon the Magician, the 
Nicolaites and Cerinthus.—First Apostolic Scrip- 
tures and the Tendencies of the Judaizing.—The 
Epistles to the Colossians and Ephesians, the Pas- 
torals, the Second Epistle of Peter, the Epistle of 
Jude, the Apocalypse-—The Epistle to Barnabas, 
the Seven Letters of Ignatius of Antioch.—Chris- 
tian Apologists and Jewish Exegesis.—The letter to 
Diognetus.—The Testament of the Twelve Patri- 
archs.—Justin and the Dialogue with Tryphon.— 
Aristo of Pella and the Dialogue of Jason with Pap- 
iscus.—Christian Expansion and Jewish Prosely- 
tism.—Rivalries and Hatred; Persecutions; The 
Case of Polycarp.—The Polemics.—The Bible, the 
Septuagint, Aguila’s Version and the Hexapla.— 


ay. ae 


Origen and Rabbi Simlai—Abbahu of Cwsarea and 
the Physician Jacob the Minzan.—The Contra Cel- 
sum and Jewish Ridicule-—Theological Anti-Juda- 
ism.—Tertullian and De Adversus Iudaeos.— 
Cyprian and The Three Books Against the Jews.— 
Minucius Felix—Commodian and Lactantius.— 
Constantine and the Triumph of the Church. 

The Church is the daughter of the Synagogue; she 
owes her early development to the Synagogue; she grew 
in the shade of the Temple, and from her first infant ery 
she opposed her mother, which was quite natural, for 
they were divided by a wide divergence of opinion. 

In the first centuries of the Christian era, during the 
apostolic age, Christian communities sprang forth from 
Jewish communities, like a swarm of bees escaping from 
a beehive; they settled on the same soil. 

Jesus was not yet born when the Jews had built their 
prayer-houses in the cities of the Orient and the Occi- 
dent; their expansion to Asia Minor, Egypt, Cyrenaica, 
Rome, Greece and Spain has already been noted. By 
their unceasing proselytism, by their preaching, by the 
moral influence they exercised over the nations amidst 
whom they lived, they paved the way for Christianity. 
True, even before them philosophers had arrived at the 
conception of one God, but the teaching of the philos- 
ophers was restricted to the few; it was not accessible 
to the common people, to those of humble station whom 
the metaphysicians rather despised. The Jews addressed 
the little ones, the weak, and planted in their souls 
germs of new ideas which had theretofore been foreign 
to them. They brought with them the spirit of the 


EE LENS, 


prophets, the spirit of brotherhood, pity and also of re- 
volt, that spirit which begat the pitying and sullen anger 
of Jeremiah and Isaiah and led to the tender sweetness 
of Hillel, that spirit which inspired Jesus. 

This immense class of proselytes won over by the Jews, 
this God-fearing multitude, was ready to receive the 
broader and more humanitarian teachings of Jesus, those 
teachings which the universal Church, from its very 
inception, undertook to adulterate and to turn away from 
their true meaning. These converts whose numbers 
steadily increased during the first century before Christ, 
were free from the national prejudices of Israel; they 
Judaized, but their eyes were not turned toward Jerusa- 
lem, and, one may say, the fervid patriotism of the Jews 
rather checked the conversions. The Apostles, or at 
least some of them, completely separated the precepts of 
the Jewish faith from the narrow idea of nationality; 
they built upon the foundation of Jewish work accom- 
plished before and thus won for themselves the souls of 
those who had received the Jewish seed. 

The Apostles preached in the synagogues. In the 
cities, where they arrived, they went straight to the 
prayer-houses and there made their propaganda and 
found their first helpers; later a Christian community 
was founded, side by side with the Jewish community, 
and the original Jewish nucleus was increased by all 
those whom they had convinced among the Gentiles. 

Without the existence of Jewish colonies Christianity 
would have encountered much greater obstacles ; it would 
have had greater difficulties in establishing itself. As 
has been stated, the Jews in ancient society enjoyed con- 


eee | age ee 


siderable privileges; they had protective charters as- 
suring them an independent political and judicial organi- 
zation and freedom of worship. These privileges facili- 
tated the development of the Christian churches. For 
a long time the associations of the Christians were not 
distinguished by the authorities from Jewish associ- 
ations, the Roman government taking no cognizance of 
the division betwen the two religions. Christianity was 
treated as a Jewish sect, thus benefiting by the same 
advantages ; it was not only tolerated, but, in an indirect 
way, protected by the imperial governors. 


Thus, on the one hand, unwillingly, the Jews were 
unconscious auxiliaries of Christianity while, on the 
other hand, they were its enemies, for which there were 
numerous reasons. It is known that Jesus and his 
teachings enlisted their first following among the Gal}- 
lean provincials who were despised by the Jerusalemites 
for having yielded more than others to foreign influences. 
“Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth?” they 
said. These humble folks of Galilee, though much 
attached to the Judaic rites and customs, in which re- 
spect they were, perhaps, stricter than the Jerusalemites, 
were ignorant of the Law and were therefore despised by 
the haughty doctors of Judea. This scorn likewise fol- 
lowed the first disciples of Jesus, some of whom, besides, 
belonged to the disreputable classes, such e. g., as the 
publicans. 


Nevertheless, while the origin of the primitive Chris- 
tians brought upon them the scorn of the Jews, it was 
not enough to excite their hatred; graver reasons were 


required for that, foremost among them was Jewish 
patriotism. 

The birth and early development of Christianity coin- 
cided with the time when the Jewish nation attempted 
to shake off the yoke of Rome. Offended in their relig- 
ious feelings, ill-treated by the Roman administration, 
the Jews felt a yearning for liberty, which grew with 
their hatred of Rome. Bands of zealots and assassins 
traversed the mountains of Judea, entering the villages 
and wreaking vengeance upon Rome by striking those 
of their brethren who bowed to the imperial authority. 
Plainly, these zealots and assassins who attacked the 
Sadducees for mere complacency towards the Roman 
procurators, could not spare the disciples of Him to 
whom the words were attributed, “Render unto Cesar 
the things which are Cesar’s.”’) 

Absorbed in the expectation of the coming Messianic 
reign, the Jewish Christians of those days were “men 
without a country”; the thought of free Judea no longer 
made their hearts throb, though some, like the seer of 
the Apocalypse, had a horror of Rome, still they had no 
passion for captive Jerusalem, which the zealots strove 
to liberate; they were unpatriotic. 

When all Galilee rose in response to the appeal of John 
of Gischala, they held aloof, and when the Jerusalemites 
triumphed over Cestius Gallus, the Jewish Christians, 
indifferent to the outcome of this supreme struggle, fled 
from Jerusalem, crossed the Jordan and sought refuge 
at Pella. In the last battles which Bar Giora, John of 
Gischala and their faithful gave to the Roman power, 
to the trained legions of Vespasian and Titus, the dis- 


ae ee 


ciples of Jesus took no part; and when Zion was reduced 
to ashes, burying under its ruins the nation of Israel, no 
Christian met his death amidst the destruction. 

One may well understand what could have been the 
treatment accorded, in those days of exaltation, before, 
during and after the insurrection, to the Jewish and 
Gentile Christians, who, with St. Paul, counseled sub- 
mission to the power of Rome. The patriotic indigna- 
tion roused by the nascent Church was seconded by 
the wrath of the rabbis against Christian proselytism. 

Originally the relations between the Jewish Christians 
and the Jews were fairly cordial. The followers of the 
Apostles, as well as the Apostles themselves, recognized 
the sanctity of the ancient law; they observed the rites 
of Judaism and as yet had not placed the worship of 
Jesus side by side with that of the one God. The devel- 
opment of the dogma of the divinity of Christ made a 
breach between the Church and the Synagogue. Juda- 
ism could not admit of the deification of a man; to 
recognize any one as the son of God was blasphemy ; and 
as the Jewish Christians had not severed their connec- 
tions with the Jewish community, they were disciplined. 
This accounts for the flagellation of the Apostles and 
the new converts, the stoning of Stephen and the behead- 
ing of the Apostle James. 

After the capture of Jerusalem, after that storm which 
left Judea depopulated, the best of her sons having per- 
ished in battle, or in the circus where they were delivered 
to the beasts, or in the lead mines of Egypt, during this 
third captivity called by the Jews the Roman exile, the 
relations between the Jews and Jewish Christians became 


as, Re ee 


still more strained. Their country being dead, Isracl 
gathered around their doctors. Jabne, where the San- 
hedrin reconvened, replaced Zion without extinguishing 
its memory, and the conquered attached themselves still 
more closely to the Law which the sages commented 
upon. 

Thenceforth, those who assailed that Law, which had 
become the most cherished heritage of the Jew, were to 
be treated as enemies worse than the Romans. The doc- 
tors accordingly fought the Christian doctrine which was 
making proselytes amidst their flock, and their attitude 
explains the severe words against the Pharisees which 
the evangelists put into the mouth of Jesus. These 
doctors, the Tanaim, merely defended their religious 
faith ; they acted like all the pillars of religion and con- 
stituted authority towards their assailants, and they con- 
ducted themselves with as little logic and intelligence. 
“The Gospels must be burned—says Rabbi Tarphon—for 
paganism is not as dangerous to the Jewish faith as the 
Jewish Christian sects. I should rather seek refuge in 
a pagan temple than in an assembly of Jewish Chris- 
tians.” He was not the only one who thought so, and all 
the rabbis comprehended the danger threatening Juda- 
ism from Jewish Christianity. Thus it was not against 
those who preached to the gentiles that their first wrath 
was directed, but against those who came to seek sheep 
in their own fold; and, if measures were taken, it was 
against their own apostates. 

Some modern interpreters of the Talmud have gone 
to the rabbinical discussions and decisions of that epoch 
for weapons against the Jews, accusing them of blind 


Soe Oy ee 


hatred against anything that did not bear the mark 
of Israel; they do not seem, however, to have carried 
into their researches the requisite scientific spirit and 
good faith. 

The Sanhedrin of Jabne regulates the relations be- 
tween the Jews and the Minens; the latter are none 
others but Jewish Christians, Jews deemed apostates, 
traitors against God and the Law. It is they that are 
declared inferior to the Samaritans and the Gentiles; it 
is with them that all intercourse is enjoined. It was at 
a much later epoch that these injunctions were applied 
to Christians generally, viz.: when the Christians became 
persecutors. Thus it was that some, exasperated by suf- 
fering and humiliation, applied to them what is said in 
the Talmud against Goim, 1. e., those Hellenes of 
Cesarea and Palestine who were always at war with the 
Jews. 

Originally, all Talmudical inhibitions contemplated 
the Jewish Christians alone. The Tanaim wanted to 
preserve the faithful from Christian contamination ; for 
this purpose the Gospels were likened to books on witch- 
craft, and Samuel Junior, by order of the patriarch 
Gamaliel, inserted in the daily prayers a curse against 
the Jewish Christians, Birkat Haminim, which has fur- 
nished the foundation for the charge that the Jews curse 
Jesus thrice a day. 

While the Jews thus sought to separate themselves 
from the Christians, the Church, swayed by a great re- 
ligious movement, was forced to cast away Judaism. To 
conquer the world, to become a universal creed, Chris- 
tianity had to rid itself of Jewish particularism, to 


break the narrow chains of the ancient law, so as to be 
able to spread the new one. This was the work of St. 
Paul, the true founder of the Church, who opposed to the 
exclusiveness of the Jewish-Christian doctrine the prin- 
ciple of catholicity. 

As is well known, the struggle between these two ten- 
dencies in the nascent Christianity, which were symbol- 
ized by Peter and Paul, was long and bitter. The whole 
apostolic service of Paul was a long battle against the 
Judaizing. On the day when the Apostle declared that 
in order to come to Jesus one need not pass through the 
Synagogue nor accept the sign of the old covenant, the 
circumcision, on that very day all ties which bound the 
Christian Church to its mother were torn and the nations 
of the world were won over by Jesus. 

The resistance of the Judaizing who wanted to belong 
to Jesus and at the same time to observe the Sabbath 
and the Passover, was in vain; their prejudice against 
the conversion of the Gentiles was of no avail. After 
Paul’s journey to Asia Minor the cause of catholicism 
was won. The Apostle was braced up by an army, and 
that army arrayed against the Jewish spirit the Hellenic, 
Antioch against Jerusalem. 

The great bulk of the Jewish Christians tore them- 
selves away from the narrow doctrine of the little com- 
munity of Jerusalem; the ruin of the holy city led them 
to doubt the efficacy of the ancient law. It was good for 
the further development of the Church. Ebionism met 
its death. If Christianity had followed the Jerusalem- 
ites it would have remained a small Jewish sect. To 
become the creed of the world, Christianity had to cast 


ere; oa 


off Jewish particularism. Indeed, the new believers, 
the Gentiles, could not observe the Jewish religion while 
remaining Greeks or Romans. Having rid itself of the 
Ebionites and the Jewish Christians and cut loose from 
its mother, Christianity allowed the nations to come to 
it without forfeiting their individuality, whereas Peter 
and the Judaizing would have forced upon them the 
customs of Israel, thereby compelling them to give up a 
part of their national individuality and to accept that 
of their converters. 

Thus, what was originally a branch of the orthodox 
Church, gave birth, towards the end of the first century, 
to two heresies, Ebionism and Elkasaism. Their forma- 
tion was quite natural, since the bulk of the Jewish 
Christians accepted the ideas of Paul and united with 
the Christian converts from paganism; there remained 
only the small group of stubborn Judaizing, who origin- 
ally represented staunch orthodoxy. Since, however, 
the Church had adopted a new course, they became 
heretics. Nevertheless their spirit remained, and we 
shall find it again among the Nazarenes and the Quar- 
todecimans; but since that time they were enemies of 
catholicity, and catholicity turned against them, or, 
rather, it fought Judaism from which they drew their 
force. 

To safeguard its supremacy, the Church had to fight 
the Jewish spirit in two forms. The first was that 
noted above, the Judaic positivism, hostile to anthropo- 
morphism and deification of heroes. Nevertheless this 
positivism has maintained its existence throughout the 
ages so that a history of the Jewish current in the Chris- 


tian Church could be written, beginning with early 
Ebionism down to Protestantism, including among 
others the Unitarians and Arians. 

The second form is the mystic form represented by 
the Alexandrian and Asiatic gnosis. The Alexandrian 
Jews, as known, were influenced by Platonism 
and Pythagorism; Philo himself was the forerunner of 
Plotinus and Porphyry in this renovation of the meta- 
physical spirit. Aided by Hellenic doctrines the Jews 
interpreted the Bible and scrutinized the mysteries con- 
tained therein, construing them into allegories and 
further developing them. 

Proceeding from monotheism and the conception of a 
personal God as their religious point of departure, the 
Jews of Alexandria were bound to come metaphysically 
to pantheism, to the idea of a divine substance, to the 
doctrine of intermediaries between man and the Abso- 
lute, 2. e., to emanations, to the Eons of Valentinus and 
the Sephiroths of Kabbala. To this Jewish fund were ° 
superadded the contributions of Chaldean, Persian and 
Egyptian religions, which coexisted at Alexandria; at 
that time were elaborated those extraordinary Gnostic 
theogonies, so multifarious, so varied, so madly mystical. 

When Christianity was born, the gnosis was already in 
existence; the Gospels brought new elements into it; it 
speculated on the life and words of Jesus, as it had 
speculated on the Old Testament, and when the Apostles, 
in their early preaching, addressed themselves to the 
Gentiles, they were confronted with the Gnostics, and 
primarily the Jewish Gnostics. Peter met them at 
Samaria in the person of Simon the Magician; Paul 


Sone “RA 


faced them at Colosse, at Ephesus, at Antioch, 
wherever he came with his Gospel, and possibly he fought 
Cerinthus ;* John himself fought them,? and, in the 
Epistles of the Apocalypse he opposed the Nicolaites who 
were “of the Synagogue of Satan.” 

After having escaped the danger of crystallizing into a 
barren Jewish community, the Church was thus exposed 
to the new danger of Gnosticism, which, if triumphant, 
would have resulted in splitting it up into small sects 
and breaking its unity. 

Though at a later date Christianity witnessed the birth 
of the Hellenic gnosis, originally it had found only the 
Jewish gnosis, t.-e., that of the Nicolaites and of Cerin- 
thus, or similar systems built upon a Judaic basis. 

All preachers of the Christian religion had to contend 
against this gnosis; traces of that fight are found in the 
Epistles of Paul to the Colossians and Ephesians, in the 
pastoral letters, in the second Epistle of Peter, in the 
Epistle of Jude and in the Apocalypse. They did not 
confine themselves to persecuting the Jewish spirit in 
the gnosis; as soon as the Pauline spirit had triumphed 
over Peter, they declared war to the Judaizing tenden- 
cies within the Church, as well as to the Jews themselves. 

Since 182, after the insurrection of Bar-Cochba, 
the separation of the Christians from the Jews became 
final. In 70 the Jewish Christians exhibited indiffer- 
ence to the destinies of the Jewish nation; under Ha- 
drian it was still worse. Five hundred thousand Jews re- 
sponded to the call of the Son of the Star, and the 


St. Irenaeus, ITI, 26. 
? Apocalypse, II and IIT. 





eae Se 


Roman legions retreated before them; it required the 
best general of the Empire to overcome this handful of 
Judeans who fought for their liberty against Rome, and 
the last feeble hope of Israel perished with its last citadel, 
Bethany, and its last liberator, Bar-Cochba; measures 
of extreme repression were taken against the Jews; they 
were forbidden to observe their religion; the spot where 
Jerusalem had stood was levelled with the plow, and the 
very name of Jerusalem disappeared; at that hour the 
Jewish Christians would report to the provincial gov- 
ernors the Jews who clandestinely observed their rites 
and devoted themselves to the study of the Law. 

On the other hand, to prevent treason, Bar-Cochba 
and his soldiers executed a great many Jewish Chris- 
tians and measures were taken to distinguish the Chris- 
tians from the Jews. On both sides the enmity was 
very bitter, and since the Church of Jerusalem had, after 
131, become Helleno-Christian, the rupture was com- 
plete: Jews and Christians became enemies for ages to 
come. 

On the one hand the Gentiles, who joined the Chris- 
tian community, brought with them all the hatred and 
prejudices of the Greeks and Romans against the Jews. 
On the other hand, the Jewish Christians, after with- 
drawing from the Jewish community, became still more 
embittered against their brethren in Israel than the 
Gentiles. 

We find all these sentiments reflected in the writings 
of the Apostle Fathers, with a growing desire to sep- 
arate Christianity from Judaism; and with the develop- 
ment of the dogma of the divinity of Jesus, the Jews be- 


Dee 1, ieee 


came the abominable people of Deicides, which they had 
not been originally. The Synagogue is now “the erst- 
while fruitful wife,’ in the words of the IJ Clementine 
Homily, and it is thought that “the law of Moses was 
not made for the Jews, who never comprehended it.” 
This expression is found in the Epistle of Barnabas, 
dating from the time of Nerva (A. D. 96) and for the 
most part reproducing the ideas contained in the oldest 
of the apostolic writings, viz., the Doctrine of the Twelve 
Apostles, which can be traced to the year 90.1. The 
Pauline traditions resound in the beginning of the second 
century in the seven letters of Ignatius of Antioch ad- 
dressed to the churches of Rome, Magnesia, Philadelphia, 
Ephesus, Smyrna and Tralles and to the Bishop Poly- 
carp. These seven letters attack very strongly the 
Judaizing Docetae and try to guard the faithful against 
those doctrines. 

Still in face of these hostile demonstrations the Jews 
were not inactive and proved very dangerous adversaries. 
It was under the fire of their criticism that the dogma 
was constructed; it was they who, by their subtle ex- 
egetics, by their firm logic, forced the teachers of Chris- 
tianity to give precision to their arguments. Their hos- 
tility worried the theologians; though having severed 
themselves from Judaism, they wanted to win 
over the Jews to their side; they believed that 
the triumph of Jesus would only be assured on the 
day when Israel would recognize the power of 
the Son of God; indeed, this belief has sur- 
vived under different forms throughout the ages. It 





1 Doctrina duodecim apostolorum. Ed. Funk. 1887. 


ae 


would seem as though the Church were not satisfied of 
the legitimacy of its faith until the day when the people 
of whom its God had come were converted to the Gali- 
lean. -This sentiment was far stronger in the hearts of 
the first Fathers than it could have been with Bossuet 
and the Figurists of the seventeenth century. It was, 
therefore, necessary to defeat the Jewish exegesis, and to 
borrow from them for this purpose their own arms, ?. @., 
the Bible. Efforts were made to demonstrate to the Jews 
that the prophecies had been fulfilled; that Jesus was he 
whose coming Isaiah and David had announced; it was 
even sought to prove to them that the Christian doctrines 
were found in the Old Testament; proofs in support of 
the Trinity were drawn from the opening words of 
Genesis or from the meeting of Abraham with the three 
angels. For centuries the defenders of Christ and the 
enemies of the Jews employed no other method. 

This work was taken up by the apologists of Christian- 
ity, and their apologetic prepossession was mixed with 
violent enmity. Thus the Letter to Diognetus, which has 
been preserved for us in the work of St. Justin, and was 
written to refute the errors of the adversaries of the 
Christians, may be considered as one of the first anti- 
Jewish writings. The unknown author of this brief 
epistle, in his vigorous attack upon the Millenarian ideas, 
speaks of the Jewish rites as superstitions. The motives 
are not the same as those which actuated the unknown 
author of the Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs, for 
he wanted, and so he declared, to convert the Jews and 
convince them of the excellence of the word of Christ. 

The most thorough of the apologists of that epoch is 


assuredly Justin, the philosopher. His Dialogue with 
Tryphon will remain a model of this kind of dialogical 
polemics, of which we have another sample from the 
same epoch in the Altercation of Jason and Papiscus, 
from the pen of the Greek Ariston of Pella; the latter 
dialogue was reproduced in the fifth century by Evagrius, 
in his Altercation of Simon and Theophilus. Justin, a 
- native of Samaria, and well acquainted with the Judeans, 
puts all the objections of the Jewish exegetes into the 
‘mouth of Tryphon, meant to represent Rabbi Tarphon, 
who vigorously fought against the apostolic evangeliza- 
tion. The author attempts to persuade him that the 
New Testament is in accord with the Old, and to recon- 
cile monotheism with the theory of Messiah as the Word 
incarnate. At the same time, replying to Tryphon’s re- 
proach that the Christians have abandoned the Mosaic 
law, he maintains that it was merely a preparatory law. 
Justin attacked the Judaizing tendencies in both forms, 
viz., Jewish Christianity on the one hand, and, on the 
other, Alexandrinism, which would admit the Word only 
as a temporary irradiation of the One Being. He closes 
with the warning: “Blaspheme not the Son of God; 
listen not to the Pharisees; ridicule not the King of 
Israel, as you are doing daily.” The irony of the Jews 
he met with sarcasm directed against the rabbis: “In- 
stead of expounding the meaning of the prophecies your 
teachers indulge in tomfoolery ; they are anxious to ascer- 
tain why male camels are referred to in this or that 
passage, or why a certain quantity of flour is required 
for your oblations. They are worried to know why an 
alpha is added to the original name of Abraham. This 


oe ee ee 


is the subject of their studies. As to things essential, 
worthy of meditation, they dare not speak of them to 
you, they do not attempt to explain them, and they pro- 
hibit you from listening to our interpretation.” 

The last complaint is important, it indicates the char- 
acter of the struggle for the conquest of souls in which 
Judaism was defeated. The second century is one of the 
most momentous epochs in the history of the Church. 
The dogma, still uncertain in the first century, is then 
formulated and defined ; Jesus advances toward divinity 
and attains it, and his metaphysics, his worship, his con- 
ception, are blended with Judeo-Alexandrian doctrines, 
with Philo’s theories of the Word of God, the Chaldean 
memra and the Greek logos. The Word is born, it 
becomes identified with the Galilean; in Justin’s apolo- 
getics and the fourth Gospel, we see the work completed. 
Christianity has become Alexandrian, and its most ar- 
dent upholders, its defenders, even its orators, are at that 
hour the Christian philosophers of the Alexandrian 
school: Justin, the author of the fourth Gospel, and 
Clement. 

While this dogmatic transformation was going on, the 
idea of a universal church gained strength. Bonds of 
union were formed between the small Christian com- 
munities, detached from Jewish congregations ; the more 
their numbers increased the stronger became the ties, 
and this conception of unity and catholicity kept pace 
with the growing expansion of Christianity. 

This expansion could not proceed undisturbed. Chris- 
tian preaching addressed itself to all the Jewries of 
Asia Minor, Egypt, Cyrenaica and Italy, wherever there 


a et 


was an unorthodox element among them, the Hellenized 
Jews whom the Christian teachers sought to win over to 
their side. The propagandists likewise spoke to the 
anxious masses who had already lent their ears to the 
Jewish word. The Jews witnessed the failure of their 
influence and, perhaps, of their hopes; at all events, they 
saw their beliefs, their faith, attacked by the neo- 
phytes; the feeling of the Jews against the Christians 
was as bitter as that of the Christians when they saw the 
obstacles which the Jewish preachers put in their way. 
Furious hatred was mutual, and the parties were not 
content with Platonic hatred. Originally the Jews had 
a better official standing than the Christians. The 
Christian congregations, unlike the Jewish communities, 
were not recognized by the law; they were considered 
enemies of law and a danger to the Empire. From this 
there was but one step to violence; this accounts for the 
periods of suffering the Church had to go through. The 
Church, in those evil days, could not count upon its rival, 
the Synagogue, for assistance; in some places where the 
struggle between the Jews and the Chirstians had 
reached an acute stage the Jews, recognized by Roman 
legislation and possessed of vested rights, would join the 
citizens of the towns in dragging the Christians before 
the court. In Antioch, for example, where the enmity 
between those two sects was most bitter, in all probabil- 
ity, the Jews, like the pagans, demanded the trial and 
execution of Polycarp. They are said to have fed with 
great eagerness the stake upon which the bishop was 
burned. 

Still, not everywhere was the strife marked with such 


SEO et 


bloody manifestations. The controversy was always very 
lively, yet it must be said it was not conducted with equal 
weapons. The Bible was their common arsenal, but the 
Christian teachers had but a scant knowledge of it. They 
did not know Hebrew and used the Septuagint version, 
which they interpreted very freely, often relying, in sup- 
port of their dogma, upon passages interpolated into the 
Septuagint by falsifiers for the good of the cause. The 
Greek-speaking Jews did not hesitate to do the same, so 
that the Septuagint, a bad translation as it was, full of 
absurdities, became available for any purpose. The Jews 
undertook first to place in the hands of their faithful a 
purified text, which gave birth to a scrupulous and lit- 
eral Greek translation by the proselyte Aquila, friend and 
disciple of Rabbi Akiba. It was only later that the same 
need was felt by the Christians, and Origen brought 
forth his Hexapla, which embodied, however, Aquila’s 
version. . 

It was a matter of necessity with the Christian apolo- 
gists who were plainly at a disadvantage, as compared 
with the Rabbinists, and it was felt by Origen himself 
in his debate on the Trinity with Rabbi Simlai. These 
debates between Jewish and Christian teachers were not 
infrequent; in Czeesarea, e. g., Rabbi Abbahu debated 
with the physician Jacob the Minewan, an the Ascension. 

These controversies, which continued through long 
centuries, were not always courteous. Simultaneously 
with touching legends concerning Jesus, scandalous sto- 
ries were invented. To humiliate their enemies, the 
Jews attacked him of whom the former made their God, 
and to the deification of Jesus they opposed the stories 


— 61 — 


of the soldier Pantherus, of abandoned Mary; these were 
taken up by philosophers hostile to Christianity, and 
Origen refuted them in his Contra Celsum, meeting 
abuse with abuse. 

Amidst these battles was born a theological anti- 
Judaism, purely ideological, which consisted in rejecting 
as bad or worthless anything coming from Israel. This 
sentiment is evidenced by Tertullian’s De Adversus Iu- 
daeos. In that work the fiery African attacked circumci- 
sion, which, he said, brought no salvation, but was a 
simple sign for distinguishing Israel; when Messiah 
would come he would substitute spiritual for bodily cir- 
cumcision; he attacked the Sabbath, the temporal Sab- 
bath, to which he opposed the eternal Sabbath. 

But this special anti-Judaism, which we find again in 
Octavius, by Minucius Felix; in De Catholicae Ecclesiae 
Unitate, by Cyprian of Carthage; in Instructiones Ad- 
versus Gentium Deos, by the poet Commodian, and in 
Divinae Institutiones, by Lactantius, was mixed with the 
desire to convince the Jews of the truth of the Christian 
religion, of the soundness of its beliefs, its dogmas and 
principles ; hence the ambition to make proselytes among 
them. This anti-Judaism crossed with the efforts which 
the Church was making to arrive at universality, and 
during the first three centuries remained purely theoret- 
ical. We shall further see how, since Constantine and 
the triumph of the Church, this anti-Judaism was trans- 
formed and more precisely defined. 


CHAPTER IV. 


ANTISEMITISM FROM CONSTANTINE TO THE EIGHTH 
CENTURY. 


The Church Triumphant.—The Decadence of Judaism. 
—The Passover and the Judaizing Heresies.—The 
Council of Nicaea.—Transformation of Theological 
Anti-Judaism.—Conclusion of Apologetics.—The 
Anti-Judaism of the Fathers and Clergy.—Abuse. 
—Hosius, Pope Sylvester, Eusebius of Caesarea, 
Gregory of Nyssa and St. Augustine.—St. Ambrose, 
St. Jerome, and St. Cyril of Jerusalem.—St. John 
Chrysostom.—Ecclesiastical Writers—The Edict 
of Milan and the Jews.—Jewish and Christian Pros- 
elytism.—The Jews, the Church, and the Christian 
Emperors.—Influence of the Church upon Imperial 
Legislation.—Roman Laws.—Vexatious Treatment 
of the Jews.—Popular Movements.—The Defense 
of the Jews, Their Revolts.—Isaac of Sepphoris and 
Natrona.—Benjamin of Tiberias and the Conquest 
of Palestine.—Julian the Apostate and the Jewish 
Nationality.—The Jews among the Nations.—Anti- 
Judaism Becomes General.—In Persia.—The Magi, 
the Jewish Teachers and Jewish Academies.—In 
Arabia.—Influence of the Jews in Yemen.—Vic- 
tory of Mohammedanism and Persecution of the 
Jews.—Spain and the Visigothic Laws.—The Bur- 
gundians.—The Franks and Roman Legislation.— 


aaa: ae 


Canon Law, the Councils, and Judaism.—The Con- 
dition and Attitude of the Jews.—Catholicism. 

For three centuries the Church had to contend against 
those with whom the greatness of Rome was inseparable 
from the secular worship of the Gods. Still, the resist- 
ance of the civil authorities, of the priests and philoso- 
phers, could not arrest the march of the Church; perse- 
cutions, hatred, hostility enhanced its power of propa- 
ganda; it addressed itself to those whose spirit was troub- 
led, whose conscience was vacillating, and to them it 
brought an ideal and that moral satisfaction which they 
lacked. Moreover, at that hour when the Roman Empire 
was rending all over, when Rome, having abdicated all 
power and authority, received its Caesars from the hands 
of the legions, and competitors for the purple bobbed up 
in every nook of the provinces, the Catholic Church of- 
fered to that expiring world the unity it was seeking. 

Yet, while offering intellectual unity to the world, the 
Church at the same time was ruining its institutions, 
customs and manners. In fact, at Rome, as well as in 
the Empire, all public functions were at once civil and 
religious, the magistrate, the procurator, the dur being 
invested with priestly functions; no public act was per- 
formed without rites ; the government was, in a manner, 
theocratic; this ultimately came to be symbolized in the 
worship of the Emperor. All those who wanted to with- 
draw from that worship were held to be enemies of 
Caesar and the Empire; they were considered bad citi- 
zens. This sentiment explains the Roman dislike of 
Oriental religions and of the Jews; it explains the meas- 
ures adopted against the worshippers of Yahweh, and 


uae higdt exe 


still more the severity shown towards the worshippers of 
Mithra, of Sabazius and particularly towards the Chris- 
tians, for the latter were not foreigners like the Jews, but 
rebel citizens. 

The triumph of Christianity was brought about by 
political considerations, and so, to make its victory and 
domination lasting, it was obliged to adopt many of the 
ceremonial observances of ancient Rome. When the Chris- 
tians had increased in numbers, and formed a consider- 
able party, they were saved and could see the dawn of 
victory glimmer, for now a pretender to the throne could 
find support among them and use their services to so- 
lidify his authority. So it happened with Constantine, 
and Constantius, perhaps, foresaw it when he com- 
manded the Gallic legions. The victorious church suc- 
ceeded to Rome. She inherited its haughtiness, its ex- 
clusiveness, its pride, and almost without any transition 
period the persecuted turned persecutrix, wielding the 
power by which she had been fought, holding the consu- 
lar fasces and hatchet and commanding the legionaries. 

While Jesus was taking possession of the superb city 
and his universal reign was commencing, Judaism was 
in agony in Palestine; the teachers of Tiberias were pow- 
erless to hold the young Judeans and the “illustrious, 
most glorious, right reverend” patriarch had but the 
shadow of authority. The flourishing Jewish schools 
were in Babylonia; the centre of Israel’s intellectual life 
was transferred thither; still wherever Christianity en- 
deavored to extend its influence it had to reckon and to 
contend with the influence of Judaism, though since the 
close of the third century the latter was of little impor- 


tance, at least directly. Indeed, at that time the Juda- 
izing heresies were nearly extinct. The Nazarenes, those 
circumcised Christians attached to the old law, who are 
mentioned by St. Jerome and St. Epiphanius, were re- 
duced to a handful of meek believers, who had found 
refuge at Berea (Alep), at Kokabe in Batanea, and at 
Pella, in the Decapolis. They spoke the Syro-Chaldaic 
language; a remnant of the primitive Church of Jerusa- 
lem, they no longer exerted any influence, swamped as 
they were amidst Greek-speaking churches. 

Still, though Ebionism was dying out, Judaizing con- 
tinued; the Christians attended the synagogues, cele- 
brated the Jewish holidays, and the contentions over the 
Passover were still on. A large faction in the churches of 
the Orient insisted upon celebrating the Passover at the 
same time as the Jews. It required the action of the 
Nicaen Council to free Christianity of this last and weak 
bond by which it had still been tied to its cradle. After 
the Synod all was over between the Church and the Tem- 
ple, officially, and from the orthodox standpoint, at least ; 
it required, however, the action of further councils to 
prevent the faithful from conforming to the old usage, 
and it was not until 341 A. D., when the Council of An- 
tioch had excommunicated the Quartodecimans that 
unity of the celebration of the Easter was effected. 

Since the Church had become armed, anti-Judaism 
underwent a transformation. Purely theological in the 
_ beginning, confined to arguments and controversies, it 
defined itself and became harsher, more severe and ag- 
gressive. Beside writings, laws appeared ; the enactment 
of Jaws resulted in popular manifestations. The writ- 


ings themselves underwent a change. Throughout the 
centuries of persecution, apologetics had flourished, and 
a vast literature had come into being, born of the need 
felt by the Christians to convince their adversaries. They 
addressed themselves now to the Jews, now to the pagans, 
now to the emperors, and all of them, Justin, Athenag- 
oras, Tatian, Aristo of Pella, Melito, endeavored to prove 
to Caesar that their doctrines were not dangerous to the 
public weal; that even without sacrificing to the gods, 
they could be loyal subjects, as obedient as the pagans 
and morally superior. They argued with the Jews that it 
was they, the Christians, that were the only faithful to 
tradition, for they fulfilled the prophecies and the least 
details of their dogmas were foreseen and announced by 
the Scriptures. Triumphant Christianity was no longer 
in need of apologists; Caesar had been converted and 
Cyril of Alexandria, the author of a book against Julian 
the Apostate, was the last of the apologists. As regards 
Israel, the Christians persisted, even to our own day, in 
demonstrating to them their stubbornness ; it was done in 
a less insidious and less convincing manner; they spoke 
as masters, and from the middle of the fifth century, 
apologetics proper ceased, reappearing only much later 
considerably modified and transformed. 

They no longer tried to win over the Jews to Christ; 
indeed, a few years sufficed to show to the theologians the 
futility of their efforts, and the effect of their reasoning, 
based most frequently upon a fantastic exegesis or a few 
absurdities of the Alexandrian translation of the Bible, 
was lost on these stubborn men, who listened only to their 
own teachers and clung the stronger to their faith the 


Oh ei —— 


more it was despised. To arguments was added insult; 
the Jew was regarded less as a possible Christian than 
as an unrepenting deicide. They denounced those men, 
whose persistence was so shocking and whose very pres- 
ence marred the complete triumph of the Church. Pains 
were taken to forget the Jewish origin of Jesus and the 
Apostles; to forget that Christianity had grown in the 
shade of the Synagogue. This oblivion perpetuated it- 
self, and to-day who in all Christendom would acknowl- 
edge that he bows to a poor Jew and a humble Jewess of 
Galilee ? 

The Fathers, the bishops, the priests, who had to con- 
tend against the Jews, treated them very badly. Hosius 
in Spain; Pope Sylvester; Paul, bishop of Constantine ; 
Eusebius of Ceesarea,' call them “a perverse, dangerous 
and criminal sect.” 

Some, like Gregory of Nyssa,‘ remain on dogmatic 
PP. G., XLVI 
ground, and merely reproach the Jews .or being infidels, 
who refuse to accept the testimony of Moses and the 
prophets on the Trinity and Incarnation. St. Augus- 
tine? is more vehement. Irritated by the objections of the 
Talmudists he brands them as falsifiers, and declares that 
one need seek no religion in the blindness of the Jews, 
and that Judaism may serve only as a term of compari- 
son to demonstrate the beauty of Christianity. St. Am- 
brose? attacked them from another side; he took up anew 
the charges of the ancient world, those which had been 





1 Demonstratio Evangelica. 

1Testimonium adversus Judaeos ex Tetere Testamento, Migne, 
2? Oratio adversus Judaeos, Migne, P. L. XLII, 

*De Tobia, Migne, P. L. XIV. 


an RTs 


used against the first Christians, and accused the Jews 
of despising the laws of Rome. St. Jerome? claimed 
that an impure spirit had seized the Jews. Having 
learned Hebrew in the schools of the rabbis, he said, re- 
ferring doubtless to the curses pronounced against the 
Mineans and distorting their meaning: “The Jews must 
be hated, for they daily insult Jesus Christ in their syna- 
gogues”; and St. Cyril of Jerusalem’ abused the Jewish 
patriarchs, claiming that they were a low race. 

We find all these theological and polemical attacks 
combined in the six sermons delivered at Antioch, by 
St. John Chrysostom! against the Jews; an examination 
of those homilies will give us an understanding of the 
methods of discussion, as well as the reciprocal attitude 
of Christians and Jews and their mutual relations. 

The Jews, says Chrysostom in the first of his sermons, 
are ignoramuses, who lack all understanding of their own 
law, and are consequently impious. They are wretches, 
dogs, bull-headed ; their people are like a herd of brutes, 
like wild beasts. They have driven Christ away, there- 
fore they are capable of evil only. Their synagogues 
may be likened to playhouses, they are dens of brigands, 
the abode of Satan. Being obliged to admit that the 
Jews are not ignorant of the Father, he adds that this 
is not enough, since they have crucified the Son and re- 
ject the Holy Ghost, and that their souls are the abode 
of the devil. Therefore they must be mistrusted; the 
Jewish disease must be guarded against. And Chrysos- 





2 Ep. OLI, Quaest. 10, Migne, P. L. XXII. 
1p. CLI, Quaest, 10, Migne, P. G., X XXIII. 
1 Adversus Judacos, 10, Migne, P. G., XLVIII. 


tom thus apostrophizes his faithful: Do not frequent 
the synagogues, do not observe the Sabbath, the fast-days 
and other Jewish rites. If you meet the Judaizing, warn 
them of the peril, for you are the army of Christ; let not 
yourselves be seduced; it would be sheer folly. What 
will you gain in this den of men who deny Moses and 
the prophets? If the Jewish teachings excite your ad- 
miration, you must find the Christian teachings false. 

In the second sermon these diatribes are resumed ; 
Chrysostom appears in it much worried over the influ- 
ence exerted by the Jews. “Our sheep,” he exclaims, 
“are surrounded by Jewish wolves,” and he reiterates 
the warning: Avoid them; avoid their impiety; it is 
not insignificant controversies that separate us from 
them, but the death of Christ. If you think that Juda- 
ism is true, leave the Church; if not, quit Judaism. Do 
you not know that the Jews offer sacrifices everywhere on 
earth, except in the only place where sacrifice is valid, 
i. e., at Jerusalem? Are you not aware that it is only 
there that they can celebrate Passover, as the law says 
(Deuter. xii) ? Therefore do not conform to their de- 
lusive Passover. 

The other four sermons are chiefly theological. Avail- 
ing himself of the invectives of the prophets, Chrysos- 
tom calls the Jews thieves, impure, debauchees, rapa- 
cious, misers, crafty, oppressors of the poor; they have 
filled the measure of their crimes by immolating Jesus. 
He does not content himself with all that. He advances 
arguments upon controversies which must have been 
very lively at Antioch. He defends the Church; he 
shows that Israel is dispersed in consequence of the death 


of Christ; he draws from the prophets and the stories of 
the Bible proofs of the divinity of Jesus, and he recom- 
mends to his flock to stay away from the sermons of those 
Jews who call the cross an abomination and whose re- 
ligion is null and useless to those who know the true 
faith. In short, says he in conclusion, it is absurd to 
consort with men who have treated God with such indig- 
nity and at the same time to worship the Crucified. 
These homilies of Chrysostom are characteristic and 
valuable. One finds there already the policy which the 
Christian preachers were to pursue throughout the ages 
to follow; that mixture of argument and apostrophizing, 
of suasion and abuse, which has remained peculiar to 
anti-Jewish preaching. Especially worthy of notice is 
the part of the clergy in the development of anti-Juda- 
ism—originally religious anti-Judaism, for social anti- 
Judaism arose much later in Christian society. These 
sermons portray, in a live picture, the relations between 
Judaism and Christianity in the fourth century; these 
relations continued for a long time, until about the ninth 
century. The Jews had not arrived yet at that exclusive 
conception of their individuality and their nationality 
which was the work of the Talmudists. Their mode of 
life did not differ externally from that of other nations 
in whose midst they lived; they generally took part in 
public affairs, in Asia Minor, as well as in Italy; in Gaul, 
as well as in Spain. Coming into daily contact with the 
Christians, they exerted an influence upon them, and as 
they had not as yet shut themselves up in that sullen iso- 
lation which their teachers later preached, they attracted 
to their worship many of those who were undecided and 


rd ie 


irresolute. Their proselytic ardor was not dead; they 
were not conscious of the fact that they had forever lost 
their moral power over the world, and they struggled on. 
They persuaded pagans and Christians to Judaize, and 
they found followers; if need be they would make con- 
verts by force; they did not hesitate to circumcise their 
slaves. They were the only foes the Church had to face, 
for paganism was quietly passing away, leaving in the 
souls but legendary survivals, which have not entirely 
died out even to this day. If paganism, through its last 
philosophers and poets, still opposed the diffusion of 
Christianity, it no longer sought, since the fourth cen- 
tury, to regain those whom Jesus held by his bonds. The 
Jews, however, had not given up; they deemed them- 
selves in possession of the true religion, upon as good a 
title as the Christians, and in the eyes of the people their 
assertion had the attraction flowing from unflinching 
convictions. 

In the morning of its triumph the Church as yet did 
not hold that universal ascendancy which it gained later ; 
it was still weak, though powerful; but those who di- 
rected it aspired to universality, and they could not help 
considering the Jews as their worst adversaries; they 
had to strain themselves to the utmost to weaken Jewish 
propaganda and proselytism. In this the Fathers fol- 
lowed a secular tradition; upon this battle ground they 
are unanimous, and there are legions of theologians, his- 
torians and writers who think and write of the Jews the 
same as Chrysostom: Epiphanius, Diodorus of Tarsus, 
Theodore of Mopsuestia, Theodoret of Cyprus, Cosmas 
Indicopleustes, Athanasius the Sinaite, Synesius, among 


the Greeks; Hilarius of Poitiers, Prudentius, Paulus 
Orosius, Sulpicius Severus, Gennadius, Venantius For- 
tunatus, Isidore of Seville, among the Latins. 

However, after the edict of Milan, anti-Judaism could 
no longer confine itself to oral or written controversies ; 
it was no longer a quarrel between twosectsequally detest- 
ed or despised. Before his conversion, Constantine, who 
originally declined to grant any exclusive privileges to 
Christians, accorded, by the edict of tolerance, to every 
one the right to observe the religion of his choice. The 
Jews were thus put on an equal footing with the Chris- 
tians ; the pagan pontiffs, the priests of Jesus, the patri- 
archs and teachers of Israel enjoyed the same favor and 
were exempt from municipal taxes. But in 323, after the 
defeat and death of Licinius, who had reigned in the 
Orient, Constantine, the victor and lord over the Empire, 
supported by all the Christians of his states, showed them 
marked preference. He made them his great dignitaries, 
his councillors, his generals, and thenceforth the Church 
had the imperial power at its disposal to build up its 
dominion. The first use it made of this authority was 
to persecute those who were hostile to the Church; it 
found Constantine quite obedient to its wishes. On the 
one hand, the emperor prohibited divination and sacri- 
fices, closed the temples, ordered the gold and silver stat- 
ues of the gods to be melted for the embellishment of the 
churches; on the other hand, he consented to repress 
Jewish proselytism and revived an ancient Roman law 
which prohibited the Jews from circumcising their 
slaves; at the same time he deprived them of many of 
their former privileges and barred them from Jerusalem, 


a eee 


except on the anniversary of the destruction of the Tem- 
ple, and that upon payment of a special tax in silver. 
Thus, by aggravating the burdens which were oppressing 
the Jews, Constantine favored Christian proselytism, 
and the preachers were not slow to represent to the 
Jews the advantages baptism would bring. To encourage 
the hesitating, who were held back from apostasy by the 
fear of revenge and ill-treatment from their coreligion- 
ists, the emperor promulgated a law which condemned 
to the stake those Jews who persecuted their apostates by 
stoning.’ 

Still, in spite of his hostility to the Jews, perhaps fac- 
titious, since the authenticity of the letter written in a 
violent language and attributed to him by Eusebius? 
cannot be vouched for, he took pains to protect them 
against the attacks of their own renegades. Under his 
successors, no such reservation was made. The Church 
was now all-powerful with the emperors. Catholicism 
became the established religion, the Christian worship 
was the official worship, the importance of the bishops 
increased from day to day, as well as their influence. 
They inculcated upon the minds of the emperors those 
sentiments with which they were inspired themselves, 
and while their anti-Judaism manifested itself in writ- 
ings, imperial anti-Judaism found expression in statutes. 
These laws, inspired by the clergy, were directed not 
only against the Jews, but against Christian heretics as 
well. Indeed, during the fourth century, so fertile in 





1Coder Justinianeus, |. I, tit. viii, 3. 
? Eusebius, Vita Constantini, III, 18, 20. 


pos NL tes 


heresies, the orthodox themselves were at times disturbed 
when heretical theologians led the emperors. 

Of these laws, all of which were enacted from the 
fourth to the seventh century, the majority are directed 
against Jewish proselytism. The penal statutes directed 
against those who circumcise Christians are reaffirmed 51 
the offense is made punishable by exile for life and con- 
fiscation of property. The Jews are prohibited from 
owning Christian slaves ; they are not allowed to marry 
Christians ; such unions are treated like criminal fornica- 
tion.? Other laws encourage Christian propaganda and 
proselytism among the Jews, either directly—by protect- 
ing the apostates' and enjoining Jews from disinheriting 
their converted sons and grandsons?—or indirectly, by 
vexatious legislation against Jews. Their privileges 
were curtailed. It was decreed that the moneys which 
were sent by the Israelites to Palestine should be paid 
into the imperial treasury ;* they were debarred from 
holding public office ;* they were assessed with hard and 
oppressive curial taxes ;° they were practically deprived 
of their special tribunals.° The vexations were not con- 
fined to that ; the Jews were harassed even in the observ- 
ance of their religion; the law undertook to regulate the 








1 Codex Justinianeus, |. 1, tit. IX, 16. 

* Codex Theodosianus, 1. XVI, tit. VIII, 5. 

? Codex Justinianeus., 1. I., tit. IX, 6. 

1Cod. Theod., b. XVI, tit. viii, 8. 

2 Code Theodosien, \. XVI, iti. VIII, 28. 

3’ Codex Justinianeus, 1. 1, tic. IX, 17 and Cod. Theodos., |. 
VES tits. VIITS 14: 

4 Codex Justinianeus, .. I, tit. IX, 18. 

5 Justinianus, Novellae, 45. 

° Codex Justinianeus, |. I., tit. IX, 15, 


Sy 1 eee 


manner of observing the Sabbath; they were ordered 
not to celebrate their Passover before Easter, and Jus- 
tinian went as far as to prohibit them from reciting the 
daily prayer, the Schema, which proclaimed one God, as 
against the Trinity. 

Still, notwithstanding the favorable disposition of 
Emperor Constantine, the Church was not given a free 
hand in everything. While restricting the religious lib- 
erties of the pagans and the Jews, he was obliged to act 
with caution ; the worshippers of the gods were still nu- 
merous under his reign, and he dared not provoke dan- 
gerous disturbances. The Jews benefited to some extent 
by this hesitation. With Constantius everything 
changed. Constantine, who was baptized only on his 
deathbed by Eusebius of Nicomedia, was a skeptic and 
a politician, who used Christianity as a tool; Constan- 
tius was an orthodox, as fanatical and intolerant as the 
clergy and the monks of his day. With him, the Church 
became dominant, and wielded its power for revenge; it 
seems the Church was eager to make its erstwhile perse- 
cutors pay dearly for all it had suffered at their hands. 
No sooner was it armed than it forgot its most ele- 
mentary principles, and directed the secular arm against 
its adversaries. The pagans and the Jews were perse- 
cuted with utmost severity; those who offered sacrifices 
to Zeus, as well as those who worshipped Jehovah, were 
maltreated: anti-Judaism went together with anti-pa- 
ganism. 

The Jewish teachers of Judea were exiled, they were 





* Codex Justinianeus |. I., tit. IX, 18, and Cod. Theod., 1. 
WEtit Ve. 8: 


cet an ee 


threatened with death if they persisted in giving in- 
struction, they were compelled to flee from Palestine, 
while in other provinces of the empire they were denied 
the rights of Roman citizenship. While the Roman le- 
gions, on expedition against King Shabur II., of Persia, 
were camping in Judea, the Jews were treated like in- 
habitants of a conquered country. They were heavily 
taxed ; they were forced to bake bread for the soldiers on 
Sabbath and on holidays. 

In the cities, monks and bishops denounced pagans 
and Jews, inciting against them the Christian populace 
and leading fanatical mobs in assaults upon temples and 
synagogues. Under Theodosius I., and under Arcadius, 
synagogues were burned at Rome and at Callinicus, in 
Mesopotamia. Under Theodosius II, at Alexandria, 
St. Cyril stirred up the mob, hermits invaded the city, 
massacred all the Jews and pagans they met, assassinated 
Hypathia, plundered synagogues, set the libraries on 
fire, defying the efforts of the prefect Orestes whom the 
emperor later disavowed. At Imnestar, near Antioch, 
Simon, the ascetic, acts likewise, and under Zeno similar 
scenes are enacted at Antioch. A fury of destruction 
takes possession of the Christians; one might say, they 
wish to destroy all traces of the old world to prepare the 
sweet reign of Christ. 

Still the Jews did not behave passively in the face 
of their enemies, they had not, as yet, acquired that 
stubborn and touching resignation which became their 
characteristic later. 

To the vehement discourses of the priests they replied 
by discourses, to acts they responded by acts; to Chris- 


tian proselytism they opposed their own proselytism and 
vowed execration on their apostates. Violent sermons 
were preached in the synagogues. Jewish preachers 
thundered against Edom, 1. e., against Rome, the Rome 
of the Caesars which had become the Rome of Jesus, and 
which was now ravishing the faith of the Jews after hav- 
ing ravished their nationality. They did not content 
themselves with rhetorical common-places, they excited 
their brethren to revolt. While Gallus, Constantius’s 
nephew, governed the Oriental provinces, Isaac of Sep- 
phoris raised the Judeans, being aided in his under- 
taking by a fearless man, Natrona, whom the Romans 
called Patricius. “Natrona,” exclaimed Isaac, “will de- 
liver us from Edom, Mordecai and Esther as delivered 
us from the Medes, the Hasmonzans as liberated us 
from the Greeks.” The Jews took up arms, but they 
were severely repressed by Gallus and his general, Ur- 
sicinus. Women, children and old men were butchered, 
Tiberias and Lydda were half destroyed, Sepphoris was 
razed to the ground and the catacombs of Tiberias were 
filled with fugitives who were hiding for months to es- 
cape detection and death. 

Under the reign of Phocas the Jews of Antioch, tired 
of persecutions, outrages and massacres, one day rushed 
upon the Christians, assassinated the patriarch Anastas- 
ius the Sinaite, and took possession of the city. Phocas 
sent against them an army with Kotys in command, the 
Jews at first repelled the imperial legions, but unable to 
hold out against large enforcements brought to Antioch, 
they were subdued and massacred, maimed, or banished. 
Their submission, however, was merely apparert; they 


eae Wee ead 


were awaiting an opportunity to renew the struggle; 
the opportunity soon presented itself. When Chosru 
II., king of Persia, marched against the Byzantine em- 
pire, to avenge his son-in-law, Mauritius, whose throne 
had been usurped by Phocas, the Jews joined the king. 
Sharbarza invaded Asia Minor, disregarding the peace 
proposals of Heraclius, who had just dethroned Phocas, 
and he saw the Jewish warriors of Galilee flock 
under his banners. Benjamin of Tiberias was the 
soul of the revolt; he armed and led the rebels. The 
Jews wanted to reconquer Palestine and restore it to 
that purity which to them had been polluted by the 
Christian cult. They burned the churches, sacked Jeru- 
salem, destroyed the convents, raising on their way all 
their co-religionists, and joined by the Israelites of 
Damascus, Southern Palestine, and the Isle of Cyprus, 
they besieged Tyre, but were forced to raise the siege. 
For fourteen years they were masters of Palestine, and 
the Christians of Palestine were in great numbers con- 
verted to Judaism. MHeraclius drew them away from 
the Persians, who had not lived up to their promise 
to surrender to their allies the holy city of Jerusalem ; 
he reached an understanding with Benjamin of Tiberias, 
promising to the Jews impunity and other advantages ; 
but when the emperor reconquered his provinces from 
Chosru, he ordered, at the instigation of monks and the 
Patriarch Modestus, to massacre those with whom he had 
treated. As he had pledged his oath to'the Jews not to 
molest them, Modestus released him from his oath and 
instituted, doubtless in compensation, a fast day which 
the Maronites and the Copts observed for a long time 


Say WO) es 


thereafter. Still the Jews of Judea were but a handful 
and their history was closed. When Julian the Apos- 
tate, after repealing the restrictive laws of Constantine 
and Constantius against the Jews, wanted to reconstruct 
the Temple of Jerusalem, the foreign Jewish communi- 
ties remained deaf to the imperial appeal; they had 
become estranged from their national cause, at least di- 
rectly. With all the Jews of that time, the restoration 
of the Kingdom of Judah was intimately bound with the 
advent of Messiah and they could not expect it from a 
crowned philosopher; they had but to await the heavenly 
king who had been promised them; this sentiment per- 
sisted throughout the ages. With the death of the last 
patriarch Gamaliel VI., the phantom of royalty and of a 
Jewish nationality passed away and there was left to 
Israel but the chief of exile, the exilarch of Babylonia, 
who disappeared in the eleventh century. Still, the 
Jews, who were spread over the world and organized into 
powerful and wealthy communities, created for them- 
selves numerous fatherlands to which they were bound 
by their interests. This attachment, however, was not 
complete, for their religion kept them in a state of griev- 
ous isolation; mixed with all nations, they suffered, 
whereever precise and dogmatic religions were establish- 
ed, the consequences of their religious non-conformity. 
Thus we see anti-Judaism flourish not only in Catholic 
countries, but also in Persia and Arabia. 

In Persia and Babylonia, the Jews lived since their 
captivity ; after the ruin of Jerusalem many more sought 
refuge in that admirable and fertile country, where they 
were given land to farm on and lived happily under the 


fee Ya 


benevolent rule of the Arsacidae. They founded schools 
at Sora, Nachardea and Pumbaditha, andmadenumerous 
proselytes. But in the middle of the third century the 
dynasty of the Arsacide, who were very unpopular, fell 
with Artaban, and Ardashir founded the dynasty of the 
Sassanides. It was a national and religious movement. 
The Neo-Persians or Guebres execrated the Hellenizing 
Arsacide who had abandoned the fire worship. The tri- 
umph of Ardashir was the triumph of the Magi, who 
raged against the Hellenizing, the Christians of Edessa 
and the Jews, for the anti-Judaism of the Magi was 
combined with anti-Christianity ; so the hostile brothers 
were persecuted simultaneously, still the Jews, more 
feared for their numbers and their strength, suffered 
more in consequence, in those troublous days. However, 
those persecutions were never of long duration. After 
suffering oppression at the end of the third century from 
Shabur IT., who led away 70,000 Jewish prisoners from 
Armenia to Ispahan, the Israelites were for many years 
left undisturbed ; but in the sixth and the seventh century 
under Yezdigerd II., under Pheroces, and under Kobad, 
restrictive measures were adopted at the instigation of 
the Magi. The Jews were prohibited from celebrating 
the Sabbath; their schools were closed, the Jewish trib- 
unals were abolished. During the reign of Kobad, 
Mazdak, the Magus, was the originator of these persecu- 
tions. Mazdak, the founder of the sect of Zendiks, 
preached communism and deprived the Jews and Chris- 
tians of their wives and property. Under the leadership 
of the Exilarch Mar Zutra II, the Jews rebelled, and, 
according to Persian chronicles, they defeated the parti- 


eA Se ST) eee 


sans of the Magus and founded a state, whose capital was 
Mahuza, a city inhabited by Persian converts to Juda- 
ism. ‘This state existed for seven years until Mar Zutra 
was defeated and killed. 


Since then the Jews, in Persia, witnessed alternately 
peace and trouble; happy under Chosroes Nushirvan 
and Chosru II., oppressed under Hormisdas IV., they 
ultimately tired of their precarious situation, and, in 
concert with the Christians of the Sassanide kingdom 
aided Omar to capture the throne of Persia, thus con- 
tributing to the triumph of Mohammed and the Arabs. 


Still the Jews had little to rejoice at under the Mussul- 
man yoke. Their first settlement in Arabia, disregarding 
the legends which trace it as far back as Joshua or Saul, 
must date from the time of the captivity, or of the de- 
struction of the first Temple. The original nucleus was 
swelled by fugitives from Judea, who reached Arabia 
at the time Palestine was conquered by the Romans. In 
the beginning of the Christian era there were in Arabia 
four Jewish tribes, whose centre was Medina. 


The Jews accomplished a moral and intellectual con- 
quest of the Arabs, whom they converted to Judaism; 
at least they made them adopt its rites. The kinship 
between the two peoples made it easy, the more so that, 
in Yemen, the Jews had in their turn adopted Arabian 
customs, which differed but little from the early Jewish 
customs. They were farmers, shepherds and warriors, at 
times freebooters and poets. Divided into small groups, 
fighting among themselves and taking part in the quar- 
tels which divided the Arab tribes, they at the same time 


ee Oe tees 


founded schools at Yathrib, built temples and propagated 
their religion as far as the Himyarites with whom their 
traders were in regular intercourse. In the sixth cen- 
tury, under the reign of Zorah-Dhu-Nowas, all Yemen 
was Jewish. With the conversion of one Arab tribe of 
Nedjran to Christianity, difficulties began; they were, 
however, of short duration, for Christian propaganda 
was cut short in Arabia by Mohammed. Mohammed 
was nursed by the Jewish spirit; fleeing from Mecca, 
_ where his preaching had aroused against him the Arabs 
who were true to old traditions, he sought refuge at 
Medina, the Jewish city, and as the apostles found their 
first adherents among the Hellenic proselytes, so he 
found his first disciples among the Judaizing Arabs. 
Likewise, the same religious causes embittered Moham- 
med and Paul to hatred. The Jews rebelled against the 
preaching of the prophet, they heaped ridicule upon him, 
and Mohammed who had until then been inclined to 
compromise with them, violently repudiated them and 
wrote the celebrated Sura of the Cow, in which he un- 
mercifully inveigled against them. When the prophet 
had assembled an army of followers he no longer con- 
fined himself to abuse, he marched against the Jewish 
tribes, vanquished them, and decreed that “neither Jews 
nor Christians” should be accepted as friends. The 
Jews rose and allied themselves to those Arabs who 
rejected the new doctrines, but the extension of Moham- 
medanism triumphed over them. By the time of Mo- 
hammed’s death they had been reduced to extreme weak- 
ness ; Omar completed the work. He drove out of Chai- 
bar and Wadil Kora the last Jewish tribes, as well as 


the Christians of Dedjran, for Christians and Jews alike 
polluted the sacred soil of Islam. 

Wherever Omar carried his arms, the Jews, oppressed 
by reason of that very affinity which united them with 
the Arabs, favored the second calif, who took possession 
of Persia and Palestine. Omar enacted severe laws 
against the Jews, who had assisted his antagonist; he 
subjected them to restrictive legislation, prohibited the 
erection of new synagogues, forced them to wear dress 
of a particular color, enjoined them from riding on 
horseback, and imposed upon them a personal and a 
land tax. Christians were treated likewise. Nevertheless 
the Jews enjoyed greater liberty under Arab rule than 
under Christian domination. On the one hand, the leg- 
islation of Omar was not rigorously enforced; on the 
other hand, aside from a few manifestations of fanatic- 
ism, the Mussulmanic mass, in spite of religious differ- 
ences, showed a friendly disposition towards them. And 
later, with the expansion of Islam, the Arabs were hailed 
as liberators by all the Western Jews. 

The condition of the Western Jews since the destruc- 
tion of the fragile Roman empire and the rush of bar- 
barians upon the old world, was subject to all the vicis- 
situdes of the times. The Cesars, those poor Cesars 
who bore the names of Olybrius, Glycerius, Julius Nepos, 
and Romulus Augustulus, fell, but the Roman laws re- 
mained ; and if for short periods they were not enforced 
against the Jews, they still remained in effect, and the 
German sovereigns could make use of them at pleasure. 

From the fifth to the eighth century the fortunes of the 
Jews wholly depended upon religious causes which were 


RY eee 


external to them, and their history among those who 
were called barbarians is bound with the history of 
Arianism, its triumph and defeats. So long as the Arian 
doctrine predominated, the Jews lived in a state of 
relative welfare, for the clergy and even the heretical 
government were busy fighting against orthodoxy and 
little worried about the Israelites, who, to them, were 
not the enemies to be crushed. Theodoric, however, was 
an exception. No sooner was the Ostrogoth empire estab- 
lished than the king prohibited the erection of syna- 
gogues and endeavored to convert the Jews.1_ He pro- 
tected them, however, against popular outbreaks, and 
compelled the Roman Senate to rebuild the synagogues 
which had been set on fire by the Catholic mobs which 
rose against the Arian Theodoric. 

Still in Italy, under the Byzantine dominion so har- 
assing to them, or under the more indifferent Lombard 
tule, for the Arian and the pagan Lombards scarcely 
took notice of the existence of Israel,—the Jews were 
guarded against the zeal of the lower clergy and 
their flocks by the benevolence of the pontificial author- 
ity, which, from the earliest days of its power, seems to 
have desired, with rare exceptions, to preserve the syna- 
gogue as a living testimony of its victory. 

In Spain the condition of the Jews was quite different. 
From time immemorial they freely settled in the 
peninsula; their numbers increased under Vespasian, 
Titus and Hadrian, during the Judean wars and after 





1 His course was probably influenced by his Minister Cassio- 
dorus, who seems to have had scant sympathy for the Jews—he 
characterized them as scorpions, wild asses, dogs and unicorns, 


ey Ah ee 


the dispersion; they owned large fortunes, they were 
wealthy, powerful and respectable and exerted a great 
influence upon the population among whom they lived. 
The imprint received by the peoples of Spain from 
Judaism, endured for centuries, and that land was the 
last to witness once more the contest, with almost equal 
weapons, between the Jewish and the Christian spirit. 
More than once Spain came very near becoming Jew- 
ish, and to write the history of that country until the 
fifteenth century means to write the history of the 
Jews, for they were intimately connected in a most re- 
markable way, with its literature and intellectual, na- 
tional, moral and economic development. The church, 
from its very establishment in Spain, contended against 
Jewish tendencies and proselytism, and it was only after 
a struggle of twelve centuries that it succeeded in com- 
pletely extirpating them. 

Until the sixth century the Spanish Jews lived in 
perfect happiness. They were as happy as in Babylonia, 
and they found a new mother country in Spain. The 
Roman laws did not reach them there and the ecclecias- 
tical ordinances of the Council of Elvira, in the fourth 
century, which enjoined Christians from intercourse 
with them, remained a dead letter. 

The Visigothic conquest did not change their con- 
dition and the Arian Visigoths confined themselves to 
persecuting the Catholics. The Jews enjoyed the same 
civil and political rights as the conquerors; moreover, 
the Jews joined their armies and the Pyrenean frontier 
was guarded by Jewish troops. With the conversion of 
King Reccared everything changed; the triumphant 


clergy heaped persecution and vexation upon the Jews, 
and from that hour (589 A. D.) their existence became 
precarious. They were gradually brought under severe 
and meddlesome laws which were drafted by the numer- 
ous councils, held during that period in Spain, and 
were enacted by the Visigoth kings. These successive 
laws are all combined in the edict promulgated, in 652, 
by Receswinth ; they were re-enacted and aggravated by 
Erwig, who had them approved by the twelfth council 
of Toledo (680). The Jews were prohibited from 
performing the right of circumcision and observing the 
dietary laws, from marrying relatives until the sixth 
generation, from reading books condemned by the Chris- 
tion religion. They were not allowed to testify against 
Christians or to maintain an action in court against 
them, or to hold public office. These laws which had 
been enacted one by one, were not always enforced by 
the Visigoth lords, who were independent, in a way, but 
the clergy doubled their efforts to procure their strict 
enforcement. The object of the bishops and the dig- 
nitaries of the church was to bring about the conversion 
of the Jews and to kill the spirit of Judaism in Spain 
and the secular authority lent them its support. From 
time to time the Jews were put to the choice between 
banishment and baptism; from that epoch dates the 
origin of the class of Marranos, those Judaizing Chris- 
tians who were later dispersed by the Inquisition. Un- 
til the eighth century the Spanish Jews lived in that 
state of uncertainty and distress, relying only upon the 
transitory good will of some kings like Swintila and 


1 Leges Visigoth, L. XII, tit. 11, 5. 





ry eae 


Wamba. They were liberated only by Tarin, the Mo- 
hammadean conqueror, who destroyed the Visigothic 
empire with the aid of the exiled Jews joining his army 
and with the support of the Jews remaining in Spain. 
After the battle of Xeres and the defeat of Roderick 
(711), the Jews breathed again. 

About the same epoch a better era dawned for them 
in France. They had established colonies in Gaul 
in the days of the Roman republic, or of Cesar, and 
they prospered, benefiting by their privileges of Roman 
citizenship. The arrival of the Burgundians and Franks 
did not change their condition, and the invaders accord- 
ed them the same treatment as the Gauls. Their history 
was subject to the same fluctuations and rythms as in 
Italy and Spain. Free under pagan or Arian dominion, 
they were persecuted as soon as orthodoxy became domi- 
nant. Sigismund, king of the Burgundians, after his con- 
version to Catholicism enacted laws against them which 
were confirmed by his successors.t| The Franks, being 
ignorant of the very existence of the Jews, were wholly 
guided by the bishops, and after Clovis they naturally 
began to apply to the Jews the provisions of the Theo- 
dosian Code. These provisions were aggravated and 
complicated by ecclesiastical authority which left to the 
secular power the duty of enforcing and compelling the 
observance of its decrees. From the fifth to the eighth 
century that part of the canon law relating to the Jews 
was worked out in Gaul. The laws were formulated by 
the councils and approved by the edicts of the Merovin- 
gian kings. 





‘Ler Burgundionum, tit. XV, 1, 2, 3. 


SEL (ey ee 


The chief concern of the church, during those three 
centuries, seems to have been to separate the Jews 
from the Christians, to prevent Judaizing among the 
faithful and to check Israelite proselytism. This leg- 
islation which had, towards the eighth century, be- 
come extremely severe in dealing with the Jews and the 
Judaizing, was not enacted at one stroke; beginning with 
the council of Vannes, of the year 465, the synods 
first confined themselves to platonic injunctions. The 
clergy at that epoch had but very scant authority and 
could inflict no penalties; it was not before the sixth 
century that the support of the Frank chiefs enabled 
it to enact penal legislation, which originally applied 
only to clerical offenders against the decisions of the 
councils, but later was extended to laymen. These can- 
onical penalties, however, comprising excommunication 
and, for priests, eventually corporal punishment, con- 
templated only the faithful; as to the Jews, the synods 
took no punitive measures against them, which has en- 
abled many writers to claim with apparent justification 
that the church maintained a benevolent attitude toward 
the Jews.* 

This is not so, however. It must not be forgotten that 
the church had no right to legislate in civil matters ; 
yet the synodical regulations, the ecclesiastical interdic- 
tions and prohibitions and the arguments by which they 
were supported, exerted an enormous influence upon the 





1The Councils confine themselves to ordering the baptism of 
the issue ofemixed marriages as well as the dissolution of the 
marriage in case the Jewish consort is not converted. Besides, 
they decree that any Jew attempting to convert his slaves shall 
forfeit them to the fise. 


SRO) ca 


political authorities ; furthermore, the episcopate exerted 
a personal and manifest influence over the Merovingian 
or Visigothic kings, and it can be shown that Childebert 
or Clotaire II., e. g., or Receswinth, in giving their sanc- 
tion to ecclesiastical decrees and in promulgating their 
own edicts, acted at the instigation of the bishops. 

Still the clergy did not confine themselves to influ- 
encing legislation; it was ever at work inciting against 
the Jews the populace whose orthodoxy was not suffi- 
ciently intolerant. It was under the leadership of these 
priests that the mob attacked the synagogues and put the 
Jews to the alternative of being massacred, banished 
or baptized. 

Nevertheless, one must not imagine the condition of 
the Jews at that epoch as very miserable. On the Jew- 
ish, as well as on the Christian side, one notices a mix- 
ture of tolerance and intolerance which is accounted for 
either by a mutual desire to make converts, or even to 
some extent by reciprocal religious good-will. The Jews 
took an interest in public life, the Christians ate at their 
tables; they shared in their joys and sorrows, as well 
as in factional fights. Thus they are seen, at Arles, to 
unite with the Visigothic party against the bishop 
Cesarius,' and later to follow the funeral of the same 
bishop, crying: Vae! vae! They were the clients of 
great seignors (as witnessed by two letters of Sidonius 
Apollinaris),? and the latter helped them to evade the 
vexatious ordinances. In many regions the clergy visited 
them, a great many Christians went to the synagogues, 





* Vie de Saint Cesaire, Migne. Patrologie latine, t. LXVII. 
? Sidonius Apollinaris, 1. III, ep. IV, and 1. V. ep. V. 


ane) eee 


and the Jews likewise attended Catholic services during 
the mass of the catechumens. They resisted, as far as 
possible, the numerous efforts to convert them, at times 
attended with violence, notwithstanding the recom- 
mendations of certain Popes;’ and they boldly engaged 
in controversies with theologians who endeavored to per- 
suade them by the same means as the Fathers of former 
ages. We shall return to these controversies and writ- 
ings when we shall come to study the anti-Jewish lit- 
erature. 

Thus, as shown above, during the first seven centuries 
of the Christian era, anti-Judaism proceeded exclusively 
from religious causes and was led only by the clergy. 
One must not be misled by popular excesses and legisla- 
lative repression, for they were never spontaneous, but 
always inspired by bishops, priests, or monks. It was 
only since the eighth century that social causes super- 





1Fredegaire (Chronique, XV), and Aumoin (Chronique 
Moissiacensis, XLV) relate that, at the instigation of Hmperor 
Heraclius, Dagobert gave to the Jews the choice between death, 
exile and baptism. (Gesta Dagoberti, XXIV). The same is re- 
ported of the Visigothic King Sisebut (see appendix to the 
Chronicle of Bishop Marius, A. D. 588; Dom Bouquet, t. II, 
p. 19). Chilperich forced many Jews to be baptized. (Greg- 
oire de Tours, H. F., 1. VI, ch. XVII). Bishop Avitus com- 
pelied the Jews of Clermont to renounce their faith, or leave 
the city. Gregoire de Tours, H. F., 1. V, ch. XI). Other 
bishops resorted to force, and it required the interference of 
Pope St. Gregory to stop or at least moderate their zeal. “The 
Jews must not be baptized by force, but brought over by sweet- 
ness,” says he in his letters addressed to Virgil bishop of 
Arles, to Theodore, bishop of Marseilles, and to Paschasius, 
bishop of Naples. (Regesta Pontificum Romanorum, ed. 
Jafle, nos. 1115 and 1879). But the authority of the Pope 
was not always effective. 


Cae oY gee 


vened to religious causes, and it was only after the 
eighth century that real persecution commenced. It 
coincided with the universal spread of Catholicism, with 
the development of feudalism and also with the intel- 
lectual and moral change of the Jews, which was mostly 
due to the influence of the Talmudists and the exagger- 
ated growth of exclusiveness among the Jews. We shall 
now proceed to examine this new transformation of anti- 
Judaism, 


CHAPTER V. 


ANTI-JUDAISM FROM THE EIGHTH CENTURY TO THE 
REFORMATION. 


Expansion and Christianity—Diffusion of the Jews 
Among the Nations.—Constitution of the Nation- 
alities—The Role of the Jews in Society—The 
Jews and Commerce.—Gold and the Jews.—The 
Love of Gold and Business Acquired by the Jews.— 
The Jew as Colonist and Emigrant.—The Church 
and Usury.—The Birth of Patronage and Wage- 
System.—Transformation of Property——The Eco- 
nomic Revolution and the Quest of Gold.—The In- 
stinct of Domination.—Gold and Jewish Exclu- 
sivism.—Maimonides and Observation.—Solomon 
of Montpellier.—Ben-Adret, Asher ben Yechiel, and 
Jacob Tibbon.—The Moreh Nebukhim.—Intellec- 
tual and Moral Abasement of the Jews.—The Tal- 
mud.—Influence of this Abasement on the Social 


in Oye es 


_ Position of the Jews.—Transformation of Anti- 
Judaism.—Social Causes; Religious Causes; Their 
Combination.—The People and the Jews.—The 
Pastoureaux, the Jacques and the Armleders.—The 
Kings and the Jews.—The Monks and Anti-Juda- 
ism.—Pierre de Cluny, John of Capistrano, and 
Bernardinus of Feltre-—The Church and Theo- 
logical Anti-Judaism.—Christianity and Moham- 
medanism.—The Albigenses, the Heretics of Or- 
leans, the Pasagians.—Heresies and Judaization. 
—The Hussites.—The Inquisition.—The Bourgeoi- 
sie and the Jews.—Kcclesiastic and Civil Legisla- 
tion Against the Jews.—Controversies and Con- 
demnation of the Talmud.—Vexations.—Expul- 
sions.—Massacres.—The Condition of the Jews and 
of the People-—The Relativity of the Jewish Suf- 
ferings.—The Reformation and the Renaissance. 


The church reaches its final constitution in the eighth 
century. The period of great doctrinal crises is at an 
end, dogma is settled and heresies will not cause it any 
trouble until the Reformation. Pontifical primacy 
strikes deep root, the organization of the clergy is hence- 
forth solid, religion and liturgy are unified, discipline 
and canonic law are settled, ecclesiastic property in- 
creases, the tithe is established, the federal constitution 
of the Church—sub-divided into sufficiently autonomous 
circuits—disappears, the movement of centralization for 
the benefit of Rome is clearly outlined. This movement 
came to an end, when the Carolingians had established 
the temporal power of the popes, and the Latin church, 


Gare 


strongly hierarchical before, became as centralized, in a 
comparatively short time, as the Roman empire of yore, 
which the church’s universal authority had thus sup- 
planted. Simultaneously Christianity spread further 
still and conquered the barbarians. The Anglo-Saxon 
missionaries had set the examples in Saint Boniface and 
Saint Willibrod; they had followers. The gospel was 
preached to the Alamans, the Frisians, the Saxons, the 
Scandinavians, the Bohemians and the Hungarians, the 
Russians and the Wends, the Pomeranians and the Prus- 
sians, the Lithuanians and the Finns. The work was ac- 
complished at the end of the thirteenth century: Eu- 
rope was christianized. 

The Jews settled in the wake of Christianity as it 
kept spreading by degrees. In the ninth century, they 
came from France to Germany, got thence into Bohemia, 
into Hungary and into Poland, where they met another 
wave of Jews—those coming by way of the Caucasus 
and converting on their march several Tartar tribes. 
In the twelfth century they settled in England and Bel- 
gium, and everywhere they built their synagogues, they 
organized their communities at that decisive hour, 
when the nations were coming out from chaos, when 
states were being formed and consolidated. They re- 
mained outside of these great agitations, amid which 
conquering and conquered races were amalgamating and 
uniting one with the other; and in the midst of these 
tumultuous combinations they remained spectators, 
strangers and hostile to these fusions: an eternal people 
witnessing the rise of new nations. However, their role 
was surely of account at all times; they were one of the 


27 GA a es 


active elements of ferment of these societies in the 
process of formation. 

In some countries, as, e. g., in Spain, their history is 
in so high a degree interlinked with that of the penin- 
sula, that, without them it is impossible to grasp and 
appreciate the development of the Spanish people. But 
if they had influenced its constitution by the numbers 
of their converts in that country, by the support they 
had given in succession to the various masters in posses- 
sion of its soil,—they did so by seeking to bring to them- 
selves those among whom they lived and not by letting 
themselves be absorbed. Still, the history of the Span- 
ish Marranos is exceptional. Everywhere, though, as 
we shall see, the Jews played a part of economic agents ; 
they did not create a social state, but they assisted after 
a fashion in establishing it, and yet they could not be 
treated with favor among the organizations to whose 
formation they had lent aid. For this there was a seri- 
our obstacle. All the states of the Middle Ages were 
moulded by the church; in their essence, in their very 
being, they were permeated with the ideas and doc- 
trines of Catholicism; the Christian religion gave the 
unity they lacked to the numerous tribes which had 
gathered together into nations. As representatives of 
contrary dogmas, the Jews could not but oppose the gen- 
eral movement, both by their proselytism, and by their 
very presence as well. As the church led this 
movement it was from the church that anti-Judaism, 
theoretical and legislative, proceeded, anti-Judaism 
which the governments and the peoples shared and which 
other causes came to aggravate. The social and religious 


state of affairs and the Jews themselves gave origin to 
these causes. But they had remained ever subordinated 
to those essential reasons which may be traced to the 
opposition, then secular already,—between the Christian 
spirit and the Jewish spirit, between the universal, and 
so to say, international Catholic religion, and the partic- 
wlarist and narrow Jewish faith. At bottom, and we keep 
in mind the changes which had taken place, the situa- 
tion was the same as in Pagan antiquity. By the very 
fact of denying the divinity of Christ, the Jews placed 
themselves as enemies of the social order, since this 
social order was based on Christianity, just as formerly 
in Rome, they had been, together with the Christians 
themselves, enemies of another social order. In the 
midst of the downfall of the ancient world, amid the 
radical transformations which had taken place this 
ubiquitous people of the Jews had not changed. It pre- 
tended to preserve as ever before, its manners, its cus- 
toms, its habits and at the same time to participate in all 
the advantages which states granted to their members or 
their subjects. For all these states, very heterogeneous 
at first, were becoming homogeneous; they were advanc- 
ing to an ever-increasing unity; from the middle ages on 
they were aspiring to that unity at which they arrived 
later. Accordingly they were led to combat the foreign 
elements, foreign nationally and dogmatically, whether 
these elements came from without, as, e. g., the Arabs, 
or they existed within, as the Jews. At this point of his- 
tory, the national struggle and the confessional struggle 
intermingle. With the persistent barbarism of the feu- 
dal system the struggle was naturally fierce, the more so 


OR a 


that it was instinctive rather than rational, especially 
so on the part of the people, for the church or the popes 
and the synods at least proceeded upon reasoning. With 
these general principles given we shall see how they 
acted upon and in what manner they influenced the 
- special and particular manifestations of anti-Judaism. 
To this end we must say a word about the commercial 
and financial role of the Jews, of their activity and their 
spirit. 

Only towards the end of the eighth century the ac- 
tivity of the Western Jews developed. Protected in 
Spain by the Khalifs, given support by Charlemagne 
who let the Merovingian laws fall into disuse, they ex- 
tended their commerce which until then centered chiefly 
in the sale of slaves. For this they were, indeed, par- 
ticularly favored by circumstances. Their communities 
were in constant communication, they were united by 
the religious bond which tied them all to the theological 
centre of Babylonia whose dependencies they considered 
themselves up to the decline of the exilarchate. Thus 
they acquired very great facilities for exporting com- 
merce, in which they amassed considerable fortunes, if 
we are to believe the diatribes of Dagobard,’ and later 
those of Rigord,* which, with all their exaggeration of 
the property of the Jews must not, yet, be entirely re- 
jected as unworthy of credence.* Indeed, with regard to 
this wealth of the Jews, especially in France and Spain, 





1De Insolentia Iudaeorum (Patrologie Latine, v. CIV ) 

1Gesta Philippi Augusti. 

*For the position of Southern Jews at the time of Philip 
the Fair, cf. Simeon Luce(Catalogue des documents du Tresor 
des Chartes (Revue des Etudes Juives, v. I, 3.) 


aes Segre 


we possess the testimonies of chroniclers and the Jews 
themselves, several of whom reproached their coreligion- 
ists for devoting to the worldly welfare much more time 
than to the worship of Jehovah. “Instead of calculating 
the numerical value of the name of God,” says the Kab- 
balist Abulafia, “the Jews prefer to count their riches.” 

Parallel with the general advance we really see this 
preoccupation with wealth grow among the Jews and 
their practical activity concentrating on a special 
business: I mean the gold business. Here we must 
emphasize a point. It has often been said, and it is re- 
peated still, that the Christian societies had forced the 
Jews into this position of creditor and usurer, which 
they have for a long time kept: this is the thesis of the 
philosemites. On the other hand the antisemites assert 
that the Jews, from time immemorial, had natural in- 
clinations for commerce and finance, and that they but 
followed their normal disposition, and that nothing had 
ever been forced upon them. In these two assertions 
there is a portion of verity and a portion of error, or 
rather that there is room to comment on them, and 
especially to give them a hearing. 

At the time of their national prosperity the Jews, 
like all other nations, for that matter, had a class of 
the rich, which proved itself as eager for gain and as 
hard to the lowly as the capitalists of all ages and all 
nations have proven. The antisemites, as well, who 
make use of the texts of Isaiah and Jeremiah, e. g., to 
prove the constant eternal rapacity of the Jews, act very 
naively, and, thanks to the words of the prophets, can but 
establish,—and puerile it is—the existence, in Israel, of 


oo OR aes 


possessors and poor. If they examined impartially the 
Judaic codes and precepts only, they would acknowledge 
that legislation and morals prescribed never to charge in- 
terest on debts.1 Taking all in all, the Jews were, in 
Palestine, the least mercantile of the Semites, in this re- 
gard much inferior to the Pheenicians and Carthagin- 
ians. It was only under Solomon that they entered into 
intercourse with the other nations. Even at that time, it 
was a powerful corporation of Phcenicians that was en- 
gaged in the banking business at Jerusalem. However, 
the geographical position of Palestine prevented its in- 
habitants from devoting themselves to a very extensive 
and considerable traffic. Nevertheless, during the first 
captivity and through the contact with the Babylonians, 
a class of merchants had formed, and from it came the 
first Jewish emigrants, who established their colonies 
in Egypt, Cyrenaica and Asia Minor. In all cities that 
admitted them they formed active communities, power- 
ful and opulent, and, with the final dispersion, important 





1“Thou shalt not lend upon usury to thy brother; usury of 
money, usury of victuals, usury of anything that is lent upon 
usury: unto a stranger (nokhri) thou mayest lend upon usury.” 
Deuter. XXIII, 19-20. 

Nokhri means a transient stranger; a resident stranger is ger. 

“And if thy brother be waxen poor, and fallen in decay with 
thee; then thou shalt relieve him: yea, though he be a stranger, 
or a sojourner; that he may live with thee. ‘Take thcu no 
usury of him or increase.” Levit. XXV, 35-35. 

“Lord, who shall abide in Thy tabernacle? . . . He that 
putteth not out his money to usury.” (Psalm, XV, 1-5). 
“Even to a non-Jew,” adds the Talmudic commentary, (Mak- 
koth XXIV). Consult also: Exod. XXII 25; Philo, De 
Charitate; Josephus, Antiquitates Judaeorum, B. IV, ch. VIII; 
Selden, B. VI., ch. IX). 


a G6 & 28 


groups of emigrants joined the original groups which 
facilitated their installation. To explain the attitude of 
the Jews it is,accordingly, not necessary to fal! back upon 
a theory of the Arian genius and the Semitic genius. 
Indeed, we well know the traditional Roman cupidity 
and the commercial sense of the Greeks. The usury of 
the Roman feneratores had no limit any more than had 
their bad faith; they were encouraged by the very harsh 
laws against the debtors,—a worthy daughter of that 
law of the Twelve Tables which granted to the creditor 
the right of cutting pieces of flesh from the live body of 
an insolvent borrower. In Rome gold was absolute mas- 
ter, and Juvenal could speak of the “sanctissima divit- 
tarum maiestas.”' As to the Greeks, they were the 
cleverest and boldest of speculators; rivalling the Phe- 
nicians in the slave-trade, in piracy, they knew the use 
of letters of exchange and maritime insurance, and, 
Solon having authorized usury, they never did away 
with it. 

As a nation the Jews differed in nothing from other 
nations, and if at first they were a nation of shepherds 
and agriculturists, they came, by a natural course of 
evolution, to constitute other classes among them. And 
devoting themselves to commerce, after their dispersion, 
they followed a general law which is applicable to all 
colonists. Indeed, with the exception of cases when 
he goes to break virgin soil, the emigrant can be only an 
artisan or merchant, as nothing but necessity or allure- 





*The Hebrew Sibyl speaks of ‘‘the execrable thirst for gold, 
of the passion for sordid gain which goads the Latins on to 


the conquest of the world,” 
4 


— 100 — 


ment of gain can force him to leave his native soil. 
Therefore, the Jews coming into Western cities acted 
in no way differently from the Dutch or English when 
they established business offices. Nevertheless, they 
came soon enough to specialize in the money business, 
for which they have been so bitterly reproached ever 
since, and in the fourteenth century they constituted 
quite a coterie of changers and lenders: they had become 
the bankers of the world. They are accused of having 
created popular loan banks, and they become the figure- 
heads for the lords and rich bourgeois. This was a fatal 
proceeding, if we remember the particular notion enter- 
tained by the church concerning money, and also the 
economic conditions prevailing in Europe from the 
twelfth century on. 

The Middle Ages considered gold and silver as tokens 
possessing imaginary value, varying at the will of the 
king, who could order its rate according to the dictations 
of his fancy. This notion was derived from Roman law, 
which refused to treat money as a merchandise. The 
church inherited these financial dogmas, combined them 
with the biblical prescriptions which ferbade loan on 
interest, and was severe, from its very start, against the 
Christians and ecclesiastics even that followed the exam- 
ple of the feneratores, who advanced money at 24, 48 and 
even 60 per cent., when the legal rate of interest was 12 
per cent. The canons of councils are quite explicit on this 
point; they follow the teaching of the Fathers, Saint 
Augustin, Saint Chrysostom, Saint Jerome; they forbid 
loans and are harsh against those clerics and laymen 
who engage in the usurer’s business. Their severity did 


= {Gf 


not prevent usury entirely, but it lessened it by brand- 
ing it with infamy. At the same time social conditions 
were such as to make usury inevitable, and in these con 
ditions the synods could change nothing whatever. Dur- 
ing several centuries feudalism had plundered communi- 
ties of their possessions and increased its territories at 
the expense of communal lands. On the disappearance 
of serfdom, economic slavery took the place of personal 
slavery, a portion of the population was forced in- 
to vagabondage, which accounts for those bands of vaga- 
bonds, beggars and thieves, that overran the roads of 
France in the fourteenth century. The other portion 
was compelled to work for wages or they lived as farm- 
ers and tenants on the soil which had been their own. 

At the same time, in the twelfth and thirteenth cen- 
turies, the wage system were established, the 
bourgeoisie developed, grew rich and acquired priv- 
ileges and franchises: capitalistic power was now born. 
Commerce having taken on a new form, the value of 
gold increased and the passion for money grew with the 
importance which the currency had acquired. 

Indeed, on one hand were the rich, on the other—the 
peasants, landless, subject to the tithe and_presta- 
tions; workingmen dominated over by the capitalist 
laws. To cap it all, perpetual wars, revolts, diseases and 
famines. Whenever the year was bad, the money gave 
out, the crop failed, an epidemic came, the peasant, the 
proletarian, and the small bourgeois were forced to 
resort to borrowing. Hence, by necessity there were to 
be borrowers. But the church had forbidden loan at 
interest, and capital does not choose to remain unproduc- 


— 102 — 


tive, but during the Middle Ages capital could only be 
either merchant or lender, as money could be made pro- 
ductive in no other way. As far as the ecclesiastical de- 
cisions had any influence, a great part of the Christian 
capitalists did not want to begin an open revolt against 
their authority ; there was also formed a class of repro- 
bates for whom the bourgeoisie and nobility often acted 
as silent partners. It consisted of Lombards, Caeorsins, 
to whom the princes, the lords granted the privileges of 
loaning on interest, gathering a part of the profits which 
were considerable, as the Lombards lent money at 10 
per cent. a month; or of unscrupulous foreigners, like 
Tuscan emigrants settled in Istria who went in usury to 
such extremes that the community of Triest sus- 
pended, in 1350, all executions for debts for three 
years. This did not take away the ground from under 
the usurers, but as I have said they found obstacles which 
the church placed in the way of their operations (the 
council of Lyons of 1215 wanted to declare the wills of 
usurers void). 

As for Jews, these obstacles did not exist. The church 
had no moral power over them, it could not forbid them, 
in the name of the doctrine and dogma, to engage in 
money exchanging and banking. The Jews, who at this 
epoch were mostly merchants and capitalists, profited 
by this liberty and the economic condition of the peo- 
ples among whom they lived. In this path the ecclesiastic 
authorities encouraged, rather than restrained them, and 
the Christian bourgeois kept them busy in it by fur- 
nishing them with capitals and employing them as dum- 
mies. Thus a religious conception of the functions of 


capital and interest, and a social system which ran 
counter to this conception, led the Jews of the Middle 
Ages to adopt a profession cried down but made neces- 
sary; and in reality they were not the cause of the abuses 
of usury, for which the social order itself was respon- 
sible. Thus we see that, in part, motives foreign to 
them, to their nature, to their temperament, brought 
them to this position of pawnbrokers, money changers 
and bankers, but it is but just to add that they had 
been prepared for this by their very position, and this 
position they surely had sought. If they did not culti- 
vate land, if they were not agriculturists, it is not be- 
cause they possessed none, as has often been said; the 
restrictive laws relative to the property rights of the 
Jews came at a date posterior to their settlement. They 
own property, but had their domains cultivated by 
slaves, for their stubborn patriotism forbade them to 
break foreign soil. This patriotism, the notion which 
they attached to the sanctity of their Palestinian father- 
land, the allusion which they kept alive in them of the 
restoration of that fatherland and this particular faith 
which made them consider themselves exiles who would 
one day again see the holy city—all this drove them 
above all other foreigners and colonists to take up com- 
merce. 





As merchants they were destined to become usurers, 
given the conditions which the codes had imposed upon 
them and the conditions they had imposed upon theim- 
selves. To escape persecution and annoyance they had 
to make themselves useful, even necessary, to their rulers, 
the noblemen upon whom they depended, to the church 


— 104 — 


whose vassals they were. Now the nobleman, the 
Church—despite its anathemas—needed gold, and this 
gold they demanded from the Jews. During the Middle 
Ages gold became the great motive power, the supreme 
deity ; alchemists spent their lives in search of the magis- 
tery which was to produce it, the idea of possessing it 
inflamed the minds, in its name all kinds of cruelties 
were committed, the thirst of riches laid hold of all 
souls ; later on, for Cortez and Pizarro, the successors of 
Columbus, the conquest of America meant the conquest 
of gold. The Jews fell under the universal charm—the 
same under which the Templars had fallen—and for 
them it was particularly fatal, because of their state of 
mind and the civil status imposed upon them. To acquire 
a few scanty privileges, or rather, in order to exist, they 
turned brokers in gold, but this the Christians sought as 
eagerly as they. More than that, under the constant men- 
ace of banishment, always acamp, forced to be nomads, 
the Jews had to guard against the terrible eventualities 
of exile. They had to transform their property so as to 
make it more convertible into money, that is, to give it 
a more movable form, and they were the most active in 
developing the money value, in considering it as a mer- 
chandise, hence the lending and—to recoup for periodic 
and unavoidable confiscations—the usury. 

The creation of guilds,—merchant and _ craft— 
guilds and their organization, in the thirteenth 
century, finally forced the Jews into the con- 
dition to which they had been led by the so- 
cial conditions—general and _ special—under which 
they lived. All these organizations were, so to speak, 


— 105 — 


religious organizations, brotherhoods which none joined 
but those who prostrated themselves before the standard 
of the patron saint. The ceremonies attendant upon the 
initiation into these bodies being Christian ceremonies, 
the Jews could not but be shut out from them: and so 
they were. A series of prohibitions successively shut 
them out of all industry and all commerce, except that 
in odds and ends and in old clothes. Those who 
escaped this disqualification did so by virtue of special 
privileges for which they oftenest paid too dearly. 

However, this is not all; other more intimate causes 
were added to those I have just enumerated, and all 
joined in throwing the Jew more and more out of 
society, in shutting him up in the ghetto, in immobiliz- 
ing him behind the counter where he was weighing gold. 

An energetic, vivacious nation, of infinite pride, 
thinking themselves superior to the other nations, the 
Jews wished to become a power. They instinctively had 
a taste for domination, as they believed themselves 
superior to all others by their origin, their religion, 
their title of a “chosen race,” which they had always 
ascribed to themselves. To exercise this kind of power 
the Jews had no choice of means. Gold gave them a 
power which all political and religious laws denied them, 
and it was the only one they could hope for. As 
possessors of gold they became the masters of their 
masters, they dominated over them, and this was the only 
way to deploy their energy and their activity. 

Would they not have been able to display it in some 
other fashion? Yes, and they tried it, but there they 
had to fight their own spirit. For many long years they 


— 106 — 


had worked in the intellectual line, devoted themselves 
to sciences, letters, philosophy. ‘They were mathema- 
ticians and astronomers; they practised medicine, and, 
if the school of Montpellier was not founded by them, 
they surely helped in developing it; they had translated 
the works of Averroes and of the Arabic commentators 
of Aristotle; they had revealed the Greek philosophy to 
the Christian world, and their metaphysicians Ibn 
Gabirol and Maimonides had been among the teachers 
of the schoolmen.* For years they had been the depos- 
itories of knowledge; like the initiated of old they held 
the torch which they handed over to the Westerners ; 
with the Arabs, they had taken a most active part in the 
efflorescence and expansion of the admirable Semitic 
civilization which had arisen in Spain and Southern 
France and had ushered in and prepared the way for 
the Renaissance. Who stopped them in this advance? 
They themselves. 

Their doctors endeavored to confine Israel to the ex- 
clusive study of the law in order to preserve Israel from 
outside influences, pernicious, it was said, to the in- 
tegrity of the law. Efforts to this effect had been 
made since the time of the Maccabees, when the Helle- 
nizers constituted a great party in Palestine. Beaten . 
at first, or, at least, hardly listened to, those who 
later acquired the name of obscurantists, kept at their 
task. When Jewish intolerance and bigotry grew in the 
twelfth century, when exclusiveness increased, the 
struggle between the partisans of profane science and 
their opponents became fiercer, it blazed up after the 

*Cf. S. Munk, Jfelanges de philosophic juive et arabe. 





— 107 — 


death of Maimonides and ended in the victory of the 
obscurantists. 

In his works, particularly in the Moreh Nebukhim 
(Guide of the Perplexed)’ Moses Maimonides at- 
tempted to reconcile faith and science. As a convinced 
Aristotelian, he wished to unite peripatetic philosophy 
with the Mosaic faith, and his speculations on the nature 
of the soul and its immortality found followers and 
ardent admirers, as well as fierce detractors. The 
latter reproached him for sacrificing dogma to meta- 
physics and scorning the fundamental beliefs of 
Judaism, e. g., the resurrection of the dead. As a matter 
of fact, especially in France and Spain, the Maimun- 
ists were led to neglect the ritual practices and petty 
ceremonies of worship: bold rationalists, they had alle- 
goric interpretations for the biblical miracles, as the 
disciples of Philo before them, and thus they escaped the 
tyranny of religious precepts. They claimed the right 
of taking part in the intellectual movement of the time 
and mingling in the society in which they lived, without 
giving up their beliefs. Their opponents clung to the 
purity of Israel, to the absolute integrity of its worship, 
its rites, and its beliefs; in philosophy and science they 
saw the most deadly enemies of Judaism and maintained 
that the Jews were destined to perish and scatter among 
the nations, if they did not recover their wits and did not 
reject everything that was not of the Holy Law. No 
doubt they were right from their narrow and fanatical 
point of view, but thanks to them the Jews continued 
everywhere as a foreign race, jealously guarding its laws 


‘Guide des Egares (Translated by S. Munk). 





— 108 — 


and customs, resigned to intellectual and moral death 
rather than to the physical and natural death of fallen 
nations. 

In 1232, Rabbi Solomon of Montpellier issued an 
anathema against all those who would read the Moreh 
Nebukhim or would take up scientific and philosophic 
studies. This was the signal for the struggle. It was 
violent on both sides, and all weapons were resorted to. 
The fanatical rabbis appealed to the fanaticism of the 
Dominicans, they denounced the Guide of the Perplexed 
and had it burned by the inquisition: it was the 
work of Solomon of Montpellier, but it marked the 
overthrow of the obscurantists. Still this defeat did not 
end the struggle. It was renewed at the end of the 
century against Jacob Tibbon of Montpellier by Don 
Astrue of Lunel, supported by Solomon Ben Adret of 
Barcelona. At the instigation of a German doctor, 
Asher Ben Yechiel, a synod of thirty rabbis met at 
Barcelona, with Ben Adret in the chair, and excommuni- 
cated all those who read books other than the Bible and 
the Talmud, when under twenty-five years. 

A counter-excommunication was proclaimed by Jacob 
Tibbon, who, at the head of all Provencal rabbis, boldly 
defended condemned science. All was in vain: those 
wretched Jews, whom everybody tormented for their 
faith, persecuted their coreligionists more cruelly and 
severely than they had ever been persecuted. Those 
whom they accused of indifference had to undergo the 
worst punishments; the blasphemers had their tongues 
cut; Jewish women who had any relations with Chris- 
tians were condemned to disfigurement: their noses 


— 109 — 


were subjected to ablation. Despite this, Tibbon’s fol- 
lowers persisted. It was due to them, that Jewish 
thought did not completely die out in Spain, France and 
Italy during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Even 
such men as Moses of Narbonne and Levy de Bagnols, as 
Ehas of Crete and Alemani, the teacher of Pico di 
Mirandola, as well as later Spinoza, were all isolated 
men. As for the mass of Jews, it had completely fallen 
under the power of the obscurantists. Hereafter it was 
separated from the world, its whole horizon was shut 
out; to nourish its spirit it had nothing but futile tal- 
mudic commentaries, idle and mediocre discussions on 
the Law. Like the mummies swaddled in their bandlets, 
it was shut up and choked in ceremonial practices: its 
rulers and guides had it shut up in the tightest and most 
abominable of dungeons. Hence a terrible deadening 
and awful decadence, a sinking of intellectualism, a 
compression of the brain which made them incapable of 
grasping any idea. 

Henceforth the Jew thought no longer. And what 
need had he of thinking since he possessed a minute, 
precise code, the work of casuist legists, which could give 
answer to any question that it was legitimate to ask? 
Yor believers were forbidden to inquire into problems 
which werenot mentioned in this code—the Talmud. The 
Jew found everything foreseen in the Talmud: the senti- 
ments, the emotions, whatever they might be, were desig- 
nated ; prayers, formulas, all ready-made, supplied the 
means for expressing them. The book left room neither 
to reason nor to freedom, inasmuch as in instruction 
the legendary and gnomical portions were almost pro- 


— 110 — 


scribed,—to lay stress upon the law and ritual. Through 
such an education the Jew not only lost all spontaneity, 
all intellectuality: he saw his morality decrease and 
weaken. ‘Taking into account actions only, and that, 
too, external ones, accomplished mechanically and not 
with a moral purpose, the Talmudists equally restricted 
the Jewish soul; and between the worship and religion 
which they preached and the Chinese system of prayer- 
mills, there is but the difference between the complex 
and the simple. True, by the tyranny they had exercised 
over their flock they developed in each the ingenuity 
and spirit of craftiness necessary to escape from the 
net which closed without pity; but they also increased 
the natural positivism of the Jews by presenting 
to them as their only ideal the material and _ per- 
sonal happiness, a happiness which one could attain 
en earth if one knew how to bind oneself to the thousand 
religious laws. To attain this selfish happiness, the 
Jew, whom the prescribed ceremonies rid of all care 
and trouble, was fatally led on to strive after gold, for 
under the existing social conditions which ruled him, 
as they ruled all the people of that epoch, gold alone 
could give him the gratification which his limited and 
narrow brain could conceive. Thus, by himself and by 
those around him; by his own laws and by those imposed 
upon him; by his artificial nature and circumstances, 
the Jew was directed to gold. He was prepared to be 
changer, lender, usurer, one who strives after the metal, 
at first for the pleasures it could afford and then after- 
wards for the sole happiness of possessing it; one who 
greedily seizes gold and avariciously immobilizes it. 


— 111 — 


The Jew having become such, anti-Judaism became 
more complicated, social causes intermingled with 
religious causes; the combination of these causes 
explains the intensity and gravity of the persecutions 
which Israel had to undergo. 

Indeed, the Lombards and Caorsins, for instance, 
were the object of popular animosity; they were hated 
and despised but they were not victims of systematic 
persecutions. It was deemed abominable that Jews 
should have acquired wealth, especially because they 
were Jews. Against the Christian who cheated him, 
and was neither better nor worse than the Jew, the poor 
wretch when plundered felt less anger than against the 
Israelite reprobate, the enemy of God and man. When 
the deicide, even so the object of terror, had become the 
usurer, the collector of taxes, the merciless agent of the 
fisc,—the terror increased ; it became intermingled with 
hatred on the part of the oppressed and downtrodden. 
The simple minds did not seek the real causes of their 
distress ; they only saw the proximate causes. For the Jew 
was the proximate cause of usury; by the heavy interest 
he charged he caused destitution, severe and hard 
misery ; accordingly, it was upon the Jews that enmities 
fell. The suffering populace did not trouble themselves 
about responsibilities ; they were neither economists nor 
reasoners; they only ascertained that a heavy hand 
weighed upon them: that was the hand of the Jew, and 
the people rushed upon him. They did not rush upon 
him alone; when at the limit of their endurance, they 
often attacked all the rich, indiscriminately killing Jews 
and Christians alike. In Gascony and southern France 


— 1122 — 


the Pastoureaux destroyed 120 Jewish communities, 
but the Jews were not their only victims; they invaded 
castles, they exterminated the nobles and the propertied. 
In Brabant, the peasants who besieged Genappe, the 
residence of the Jews, did not spare their own corelig- 
ionists. Similarly, when King Armleder raised the 
tramps in the Rhine lands, he had in his train not only 
Judenschliger.(Jew beaters), but also slayers of the rich. 
Only that among the Christians the propertied alone suf- 
fered violence at the hands of the rebels, the poor were 
spared; among the Jews the rich and the poor were 
exterminated indiscriminately, for, before any crime, 
they were guilty of being Jews. To the wrath for being 
plundered the mob added the aversion to being plun- 
dered by cursed ones, and no consideration restrained 
the plundered, as the accursed were of a strange race, 
forming a people apart. 


At all events, the masses, restrained by authority and 
law, rarely attacked the capitalists in general; to goad 
them on to revolt a terrible accumulation of mis- 
eries was necessary. But with reference to the Jews their 
ill-feeling was not restrained at all; on the contrary, it 
was encouraged. This was a means to divert attention, 
and every now and then kings, nobles or burghers of- 
fered their slaves a holocaust of Jews. This unfortunate 
Jew was utilized for two purposes during the Middle 
Ages. They employed him as a leech, let him swell up, 
fill himself with gold, then they made him clear; or, 
whenever popular hatred was too bitter, he was subjected 
to corporal punishment which was profitable to the 


— 113 — 


Christian capitalists, who thus paid a tribute of propi- 
tiary blood to those whom they oppressed. 

To give satisfaction to their wretched subjects, the 
kings would from time to time proscribe Jewish usury, 
would cancel debts ; but oftenest they tolerated the Jews, 
encouraged them, being sure to derive benefit from them 
through confiscation or by taking their place as credit- 
ors. Nevertheless these measures were always but tem- 
porary, and governmental anti-Judaism was purely po- 
litical. They banished the Jews either to mend their 
finances, or to elicit the gratitude of the small fry by 
partly relieving them of the heavy burden of debt; but 
they would soon recall the Jews, as they could find no 
better tax collectors. However, anti-Jewish legislation 
was, as we have said, most frequently forced upon the 
royal power by the church, either by the monks or the 
popes and synods. Even the regular clergy and the 
secular clergy acted upon different principles. 

The monks addressed themselves to the people, with 
whom they were in constant touch. In the first place 
they preached against the deicides, but they represented 
these deicides as domineering, while they should have 
been bent forever under the yoke of Christendom. All 
these preachers gave expression to popular grievances. 
“Tf the Jews fill their granaries with fruit, their cellar 
with victuals, their bags with money and their chests 
with gold,” said Pierre de Cluny :1 “it is neither by till- 
ing the earth, nor by serving in war, nor by practising 





*Peter the Venerable, abbot of Cluny: Tractatus adversus 
Judaeorum inveteratam duritiam (Bibl. des Peres Latins, 
Lyons). 


a 


any other useful and honorable trade, but by cheating the 
Christians and buying, at low price, from thieves the 
things which they have stolen.” They overheated the 
passions which needed only expression, and in their 
homilies and sermons they laid particular stress on the 
social side. ‘They thundered against the “infamous” 
nation “which lives by pillage,’ and while their invec- 
tives were prompted by zeal in proselytism, they posed 
especially as avengers, who had come to punish “the inso- 
lence, avarice and hard-heartedness” of the Jews. And 
they found a hearing. In Italy, John of Capistrano, “the 
scourge of the Hebrews,” was stirring up the poor against 
the usury and obduracy of the Jews. He continued his 
work in Germany and Poland, leading gangs of poor 
wretches and desperadoes who exacted expiation 
for their sufferings from the Jewish communities. Ber- 
nardinus of Feltre followed his example, but he was 
haunted by more practical notions, among others by that 
of establishing mont-de-piétés to counteract the rapacity 
of the lenders. He travelled all over Italy and Tyrol, 
demanding the expulsion of the Hebrews, inciting insur- 
rections and riots, causing the massacre of the Jews in 
Trent. 

The kings, nobles and bishops did not encourage this 
campaign of the regulars. They protected the Jews 
from the monk Radulphe, in Germany; in Italy, they 
set themselves against the preachings of Bernardinus of 
Feltre, who accused the princes of having sold them- 
selves to Yechiel of Pisa, the wealthiest Jew of the pen- 
insula; in Poland, Pope Gregory XI. stopped the cru- 
sade of Jan of Ryczywol. The rulers had every interest 


— 115 — 


to suppress these partial uprisings ; from experience they 
knew that when the bands of starvelings were through 
slaughtering the Jews, they would kill those who pos- 
sessed too great wealth, those who enjoyed excessive 
privileges, or those lords, counts or barons, whose 
power weighed too heavily on the shoulders of tax-payers. 
The Pastoureaux, the Jacquerie, the faithful followers 
of the Armeleders, afterwards the peasants of Munzer, 
had demonstrated that the holders of power were not 
unreasonable in their fear: by protecting the Jews to a 
certain degree they protected themselves. 

As for the Church, it kept to theological anti-Judaism, 
and, being essentially conservative, favoring the 
mighty and rich, it took care not to encourage the pas- 
sions of the people. I speak of the official Church, 
abounding in prebendaries; striving for unity and cen- 
tralization, cherishing dreams of universal domination ; 
the Church of the Synods, the law-making Church, and 
not the church of petty priests and monks which was 
stirred by the same passions as agitated the lowly. But 
if the church sometimes interfered in behalf of the Jews 
when they were the object of the mob’s fury, it nursed 
this fury and supplied it with fuel by combatting Juda- 
ism, even though combatting it from different motives. 

Faithful to its principles, it vainly persecuted the 
spirit of Judaism in all its forms. It could not get rid 
of it, as this Jewish spirit had inspired it in its earliest 
stages. It was impregnated with it as the beach-sands 
are impregnated with the sea-salt which rises to their 
surface, and despite its efforts from the second century 
on to rebuff its origin, to thrust far away all memory of 


— 116 — 


its original foundation, it still preserved the marks 
of it. In seeking to realize its conception of Christian 
states directed and ruled over by the Papacy, the 
church strove to reduce all anti-Christian elements. 
Thus it inspired Europe’s violent reaction against the 
Arabs, and the struggle of the European nationalities 
against Mohammedanism was a struggle at once political 
and religious. 

Still the Moslem danger was external, but the internal 
dangers threatening the dogma proved quite as grave for 
the church. As it had become all-powerful, as it had at- 
tained the maximum of Catholicity, it gave support to 
heresy less readily; beginning with the eighth century 
the legislation against heretics grew more severe. For- 
merly benign and confining itself to canonic penalties, 
hereafter it appealed to the secular powers, and the 
Vaudois, Albigenses, Beghards, Apostolic Brothers, Lu- 
ciferians were treated with cruelty. The limit of this 
movement was reached in the inquisition which the 
Pope Innocent III. instituted in the thirteenth cen- 
tury. Henceforth, a special tribunal, backed by civil 
authority, obedient to its orders was to be 
the sole judge, and pitiless at that, of heresy. 

The Jews could not be overlooked in this legislation. 
They were persecuted not as Jews—the church wished 
to preserve the Jews as a living testimony of its triumph 
—but because they instigated people to judaization, 
either directly or unconsciously, by the very fact of their 
existence. Had not their philosophers sent forth meta- 
physicians like Amaury de Béne and David de Dinan? 
What is more, were not certain heretics judaizing? 


The Pasagians of Upper Italy observed the Mosaic law; 
the Orleans heresy was a Jewish heresy; an Albigens 
sect maintained that the doctrine of the Jews was pref- 
erable to that of the Christians; the Hussites were sup- 
ported by the Jews; accordingly, the Dominicans 
preached against the Hussites and the Jews, and the im- 
perial army that advanced against Jan Ziska massacred 
the Jews on its way. 

In Spain, where the mingling of Jews and Christians 
was considerable, the Inquisition was instituted by Greg- 
ory XI, who gave it its constitution, to surveil the juda- 
izing heretics and the Jews and Moors, who, though not 
subjects of the Church, were subject to the will of the 
Holy Office whenever “by their words or their writings 
they urged the Catholics to embrace their faith.” More 
than that, the popes recalled the canonic decisions to the 
minds of the Kings of Spain, because the fueres, 1. e., 
Castillian customs which superseded the Visigothic laws, 
had granted equal rights to Jews, Christians and Mos- 
lemites. 

All these ecclesiastic measures reinforced the anti- 
Jewish sentiments of kings and nations; they were 
the prime causes; they upheld a special state of mind, 
which political motives emphasized with the kings; 
social motives—with the nations. Owing to it, anti- 
Judaism became general, and no class of society was free 
from it, for all classes were more or less guided by the 
Church or inspired by its teachings, all of them were or 
thought themselves harmed by the Jews. The nobility 
took offense at their riches ; the proletarians, the artisans 
and peasants, in a word the small people, were provoked 


— 118 — 


by their usury ; as for the bourgeoisie, the merchant class, 
. the dealers in money, it was in permanent rivalry with 
the Jews, and their constant competition engendered 
hatred. The modern contest between Christian and Jew- 
ish capital assumes shape in the fourteenth and fifteenth 
centuries, the Catholic bourgeois looks with calm eyes on 
the murder of Jews, which rids him of an often success- 
ful rival. 

Thus everything concurred to make of the Jew an 
universal foe, and the only support that he found during 
this terrible period of several centuries was with the 
popes, who, while abetting the passions of which 
they made capital, still wanted to guard carefully this 
witness of the excellence of the Christian faith. If the 
Church preserved the Jews, it often was not without 
schooling and punishing them. The Church forbade giv- 
ing them public positions that might confer upon them 
authority over Christians ; it instigated the kings to adopt 
restrictive measures against them ; it imposed upon them 
distinctive badges, the rowelle and hat; it shut them 
in those ghettoes, which the Jews had often accepted and 
even sought in their eagerness to separate themselves 
from the world, to live apart, without mixing with the 
nations, to preserve intact their beliefs and their race; 
so that in many points the edicts bidding the Jews to re- 
main confined in special quarters really but sanctioned 
an already existing state of affairs. But the chief task 
of the Church was to combat the Jewish religion dog- 
matically. However, controversies, numerous as they 
were, did not suffice for this ; laws were issued against the 
Jewish books. The reading of the Mishna in synagogues 


— 119 — 


had already been prohibited by Justinian ;- after him no 
laws were passed against the Talmud, until the time of 
Saint Louis. After the controversy between Nicholas 
Donin and Yechiel of Paris (1240) Gregory IX ordered 
to burn the Talmud; this order was repeated by Inno- 
cent IV (1244), Honorius IV (1286), John XXII 
(1320) and the anti-pope Benedict XIII (1415). Morc- 
over, the Jewish prayers were expurgated and the erec- 
tion of new synagogues was forbidden. 

The civil laws expounded the ecclesiastical decrees and 
were inspired by them, as, e. g., the laws of Alfonso 
X of Castile, in the code of Siete Partidas,’ the disposi- 
tions of Saint Louis, those of Phillip IV, those of the 
German emperors and the Polish kings.2, The Jews were 
forbidden to appear in public on certain days; a personal 
toll was imposed upon them as if on cattle; they were 
sometimes forbidden to marry without authorization. 

To the laws one must add the customs—vexatious cus- 
toms—like that of Toulouse, which made the syndic of 
the Jews subject to boxing on the ear. The mob insulted 
them during their holidays and sabbaths; it profaned 
their cemeteries; on leaving’ the Mysteries and Passion 
plays it would lay their houses waste. 

Not content with vexing them, with expelling them, 
as did Edward I in England (1287), Phillip IV and 
Charles VI in France (1306 and 1394), Ferdinand the 
Catholic in Spain (1492), they killed the Jews every- 
where. 








1 Novellae, 146. 
UTitle KXLY: 
>General Statute of Ladislas Jagelion. Art. XIX. 


— 120 — 


When on their way to liberate the Holy Tomb, the Cru- 
saders prepared themselves for the Holy War by the im- 
molation of Jews; whenever the black plague or a 
famine raged, the Jews were sacrificed in holocaust to 
the angered divinity; whenever extortions, misery, hun- 
ger, destitution maddened the people, they would 
avenge themselves on the Jews, who were made victims 
of expiation. “What’s the use of going to fight the Mo- 
hammedans,” cried Pierre de Cluny,! “when we have 
among us the Jews, who are worse than the Saracens?” 

What was to be done against an epidemic unless to kill 
the Jews who conspired with the lepers to poison the 
wells? And so they were exterminated in York and Lon- 
don; in Spain at the instigation of St. Vincent Ferrer ; 
in Italy, where John of Capistrano preached; in Poland, 
Bohemia, France, Moravia, Austria. They were burned 
in Strassburg, Mayence, Troyes. In Spain the Marranos 
mounted the scaffold by the thousands; elsewhere they 
were ripped open with pitchforks and scythes; they were 
beaten to death like dogs. 

Surely the prophets who had called upon Judah—in 
punishment for his crimes—the terrible wrath of God, 
had never dreamed of more frightful misfortunes than 
those that befell him. When reading the Jewish martyr- 
ology, such as the Avignonian, Ha-Cohen,” lamented in 
the sixteenth century, the martyrology, which extends 
from Akiba, torn to pieces by iron curry-combs, on to the 
executed of Ancona praying in the flames, to the heroes 





1 Loe. cit: 
* Emek-ha-Bacha, La Vallee des Pleurs. Translated by Julien 
See. 


— 21 — 


of Vitry who immolated themselves, one is overcome with 
pity. The Valley of Tears is the name of the book which 
sounded the call for mourning. “I have called it The 
Valley of Tears,” says the ancient chronicler, “because it 
is the proper title for it. Whoever reads it will gasp for 
breath, his eyes will suffuse with tears, and with hands 
on his loins he will exclaim: ‘How long, O my Lord?’ ” 

What crimes could have deserved such frightful pun- 
ishments? How poignant must have been the afflictions 
of those beings! In those evil hours they cuddled one 
to the other and felt themselves brethren ; the bond that 
joined them was fastened more tightly. To whom could 
they tell their plaints and their feeble joys, if not to 
themselves? From these general desolations, from these 
sobs was born an intense and suffering brotherhood. The 
ancient Jewish patriotism became still more exalted. 
These outcasts, maltreated all over Europe, and march- 
ing with bespattered faces, got it into their heads to feel 
Zion and its hills brought back to life, to conjure up 
—what a supreme and sweet consolation !—the beloved 
banks of the Jordan and the lake of Galilee ; they arrived 
there through an intense solidarity. Amidst the groans 
and oppressions they were forced more than ever to live 
among themselves and to band more closely. For did 
they not know that on their journeys they would find a 
safe refuge with the Jew only, that if sickness befell 
them on the way, a Jew alone would help them like a 
brother, and that if they died far from theirs, Jews alone 
could bury them according to their rites and say the cus- 
tomary prayers over their bodies ? 

Still, to understand exactly the position of the Jews 


during these Dark Ages, one must compare it with that 
of the people surrounding them. The persecutions of the 
Jews would go on now that their exclusive character 
would render them more sorrowful. In the Middle Ages 
the proletarians and the peasants were not much better 
off ; after being shaken up by terrible upheavals, the Jews 
would enjoy periods of comparative tranquillity, of 
which the serfs knew nothing. Steps were taken against 
them, but what steps were not taken against the Moris- 
coes, the Hussites, the Albigenses, the Pastoureaux, the 
Jacques, against the heretics and the outcasts? From 
the eleventh to the end of the sixteenth century, abomi- 
nable years fell out, and the Jews suffered from it not 
a whit more than did those among whom they lived. 
They suffered for other reasons, and traces of it were 
left impressed in a different way. But as the man- 
ners had grown softer, hours of greater happiness for 
them were born. We shall see what changes the Refor- 
mation and the Renaissance were to bring about in their 
position. 


CHAPTRR Vi. 


ANTI-JUDAISM FROM THE TIME OF THE REFORMATION 
TILL THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 


Position of the Jews at the Beginning of the Sixteenth 
Century.—Defeat of the Moors.—Banishment from 
Spain.—Softening of the Manners.—The Last Per- 
secutions.—The Inquisition in Portugal.—The Ren- 
aissance and the Reformation of the Church.—The 
Attacks upon the Supremacy of Rome.—The Hu- 
manists and the Talmud.—Reuchlin and Pfeffer- 
korn.—The Reformation and the Jewish Spirit.— 
The Bible—Luther and the Jews.—Transforma- 
tion of the Social and the Religious Question.—The 
Peasant Wars.—The Jews no Longer the Chief Ene- 
mies of the Church.—The Christian State-—Cathol- 
icism, the Reformed and the Jews.—The Popes and 
Judaism.—Measures Against the Talmud and Con- 
versions.—Anti-Jewish Legislation.—Molestations 
and Outrages.—Dogmatic Anti-Judaism.—The Re- 
calling of the Jews.—The Jews of Europe in the 
Eighteenth Century.—The Jews in the Nether- 
lands, England, Poland, Turkey.—The Portuguese 
Jews in France.—The Intellectual and Moral Con- 
dition of the Jews.—Kabbalism and Messianism.— 
Sabbatai Zevi and Franck.—The Mystic Sects: the 
Chassidim and New-Chassidim, the Donmeh and 
the Trinitarians.—Talmudism.—Joseph Caro and 





eee ee 


the Schulchan Aruch ; the Pilpul—Jewish Reaction 
Against the Talmud.—Mardochee-Kolkos, Uriel 
Acosta, Spinoza.—Mendelssohn, the Meassef and 
the Jewish Emancipation—Humanitarian Philos- 
ophy and the Jews.—The Social State and the Jews. 
—The Economic and the Political Objections.— 
Maury and Clermont-Tonnerre; Rewbel and Gré- 
goire.—The Revolution.—The Appearance of the 
Jews in Society. 


When the first breatn of freedom swept over the world 
at the dawn of the sixteenth century, the Jews were but 
a nation of captives and slaves. Cooped up in the ghet- 
toes, whose walls their own foolish hands helped only to 
make thicker, they were retired from human society, 
and, for the most part, lived in a state of lamentable and 
heartrending abjection. Their intellect had become atro- 
phied, as they had themselves barred all the doors and 
shut all the windows through which air and light might 
have come to them. Under the influence of the sur- 
rounding nations, special and disgraceful legislations, 
under the depressing and baneful influence of the Tal- 
mudists, they had acquired during the whole of the Mid- 
dle Ages that specific physiognomy, which they have 
lost in our days only, and which many still preserve in 
Poland, Rumania, Russia, Hungary, Bohemia and sev- 
eral parts of Germany; a physiognomy which habitual 
humility had rendered base and obsequious, which the 
circumstances of existence had made fearsome and sickly, 
which the exclusive instruction by rabbis had imprinted 
with cunning and hypocrisy, but which suffering had re- 


fined, at times illumed with passive sadness and sorrow- 
ful resignation. The number of those who had escaped 
this abasement was very limited, and the Jews who suc- 
ceeded in keeping a free brain and proud spirit were in 
the lowest minority. These were mostly physicians, as 
medicine is the only science permitted by the Talmud; 
at the same time there were philosophers occasionally, 
and we shall see the role they played in Italy during the 
Renaissance. As for the mass of the Jews they had no 
capabilities for anything outside of commerce and usury. 
However, they had no rights whatever, no capacities, no 
road was open to them, and the few paths which they 
could still take were closed for them by their own doctors, 
who thus acted as allies of the Christian legists. 

These latter had been inspired in their work by the 
Church doctrines which Thomas Aquinas had expressed 
in such bold relief. Judaei sunt servi, the master said 
energetically ; the law considered them in no other wise. 
Toward the end of the fifteenth century, the Jew had 
become the serf of the Imperial Chamber in Germany; in 
France he was the king’s serf, the serf of the lord, less 
even than a serf, for a serf could still own something, 
while a Jew in reality had no property; he was a thing 
rather than a person. The king and the lord, the bishop 
or the abbot, could dispose of ail his belongings, 1. e., of 
all that seemed to belong to him, since for him the possi- 
bility of owning was purely fictitious. He was taxable 
at will; he was subjected to fixed imposts, without prej- 
udice to confiscations, and while, on the one hand, the 
Church was making exery effort to attract to it the Jew, 
on the other hand, the baron and church dignitaries kept 


— 126 — 


him in his condition. If he turned to Christianity he 
lost his possessions in favor of the lord, who was anxious 
to make good the loss of the taxes which he could no 
longer levy on the convert, and thus it was to his interest 
to remain in the slaves’ prison. He was looked upon as 
a beast, impure and useful at that, as lower than a dog 
or hog, to which the personal toll likened him, however ; 
he was the one forever accursed, he upon whom it was 
lawful, even meritorious, to shower the blows which the 
Crucified had received in Pilate’s pretorium. 

The only country where the Jews could claim the dig- 
nity of human beings was closed to them at the opening 
of the sixteenth century. The capture of Granada and 
‘the conquest of the Moorish Kingdom had deprived the 
Jews of their last refuge. The whole of Spain became 
Christian on the day (January 2, 1492) when Ferdinand 
and Isabella entered the Mohammedan city. The holy 
war of the Spaniards against the infidels ended victori- 
ously, and the Moors in existence were cruelly persecuted 
in spite of the security which had been granted them. 
The victory having aroused on the one hand fanaticism, 
and the national sentiment on the other, Spain, now free 
from the Moors, wished to get rid of the Jews, whom the 
Catholic king and queen expelled the very year of Boab- 
dil’s fall, while the Inquisition doubled the severities 
against the Marranos and the descendants of the Moris- 
coes. 

Still, the time of great sorrows had passed for the 
Jews, notwithstanding that the circumstances to which 
they had been reduced were lamentable. They began to 
descend the hill which they had so laboriously climbed, 


— 127 — 


and if they found as yet no complete security in their 
paths, they met with more humaneness, more pity. The 
manners soften at this epoch, the souls become less 
rude, people actually acquire the idea of a human being; 
this age when individualism increases, better under- 
stands the individuals; while personality develops, more 
tenderness is displayed towards the personality of the 
other. 

The Jews felt the effects of this state of mind. They 
were despised all the same, but they were hated in a less 
violent way. It was still sought to attract them to Chris- 
tianity, but that was by persuasion. They were banished 
from a good many cities and countries ; they were driven 
from Cologne and Bohemia in the sixteenth century ; the 
trade-bodies of Frankfort and Worms, led by Vincent 
Fettmilch, forced them to leave those cities ; but as serfs 
of the Imperial Chamber, they were efficiently protected 
by their suzerain. If Leopold I sent them out of Vienna, 
if later on Maria Theresa expelled them from Moravia, 
these decrees of exile had but a temporary effect, their 
consequences were felt but for a short time; and when 
the Jews re-entered the cities by virtue of undoubted 
tolerance, they were not molested. The massacres of 
Franconia and Moravia, the funeral piles of Prague, 
were exceptions in the sixteenth century, and as for the 
extermination ordered in Poland by Chmielnicki, in the 
seventeenth century, they reached the Jews by ricochet 
only. 

Hereafter there have been no systematic persecutions, 
except those kept up in Spain against the Jewish con- 
verts, and in Portugal when introduced by the Pope 


— 18 — 


Clement VII, at the request of John III, and after the 
massacres of 1506. Even there the inquisition was in- 
trusted to the Franciscans, who had showed themselves 
less cruel than the Spanish Dominicans. 

Still the Jews did not change. Such as we have seen 
them right in the Middle Ages, we find them also at the 
moment of the Reformation; morally and intellectually 
the mass of the Jews was perhaps even worse. But if 
they had not changed, those by their side had changed. 
People were less believing, and therefore less inclined to 
detest heretics. Averroism had prepared this decadence 
of faith, and the part played by the Jews in the spread 
of Averroism is well known; so that they thus had 
worked for their own benefit. The majority of Averro- 
ists were unbelievers, or more or less assailed the Chris- 
tian religion. They were the direct ancestors of the men 
of the Renaissance. It is owing to them that the spirit of 
doubt, as well as the spirit of investigation, had worked 
itself out. The Florentine platonists, the Italian Aris- 
totelians, the German humanists came from them; 
thanks to them Pomponazzo composed the treatises 
against the immortality of the soul; thanks to them, too, 
among the thinkers of the sixteenth century sprang up 
the theism which corresponded with the decadence of 
Catholocism. 

Animated by such sentiments, the men of this period 
could not glow with religious indignation against the 
Jews. Other preoccupations engaged them, though, and 
they had to abate two powerful authorities—scholasticism 
and the supremacy of Rome. The struggles of the pre- 
ceding century, the schism of the West, the license in the 


— 129 — 


manners of the clergy, simony, the sale of benefices and 
indulgences, all these had weakened the Church and im- 
paired the Papacy. There were protests rising against 
them on all sides. The authority of councils was being 
proclaimed above that of the pope. A distinction was 
made between the Universal Church, which was infal- 
lible, and the Roman Church, which was liable to error. 
The seculars and the regulars were in dispute, voices 
were heard demanding change. “The clergy must be 
made moral,” said the Father of the Vienna Synod 
(1311). After them, it was declared that it was neces- 
sary to reform “the head and the limbs.” The move- 
ment of the Hussites, that of the Frerots, the Fraticel- 
lians, the Beghards, had already been a protest against 
the wealth and corruption of the Church; but Papacy 
was incapable of reform, and the Reformation had to 
take place outside of and against it. 

The Humanists were its promoters. Everything 
turned them away from Catholicism. The Greeks of 
Constantinople, fleeing from the Turks, had brought to 
them the treasures of the ancient literatures. By discov- 
ering a new world Columbus was to open for them un- 
known horizons. They were finding new reasons for com- 
batting scholasticism,thatoldservant-maid of the Church. 
The humanists were becoming skeptics and pagans in 
Italy, but in Germany the emancipating movement 
which they helped to bring about was becoming more re- 
ligious. To beat the scholastics the humanists of the 
empire became theologians, and went to the very 
sources in order to arm themselves better; they learned 
Hebrew, not as Pico di Mirandola and the Italians had 


— 130 — 


done, in the way of a dilettant or out of love for knowl- 
edge, but in order to find therein arguments against their 
opponents. 

During these years which ushered in the Reformation, 
the Jew turned educator, and taught the scholars He- 
brew ; he initiated them into the mysteries of the kabbala 
after having opened to them the doors of Arabic philos- 
ophy. Against Catholicism he equipped them with the 
formidable exegesis which the rabbis had cultivated and 
built up during centuries: the exegesis which protes- 
tantism, and later on rationalism, would make good use 
of. By a singular chance the Jews, who had consciously 
or unconsciously supplied humanism with weapons, had 
also given it the pretext for its first serious battle. The 
contest for or against the Talmud was the forerunner of 
the disputes over the Eucharist. 

The struggle started at Cologne, the city of the inqui- 
sition and capital of the Dominicans. A converted Jew, 
Joseph Pfefferkorn, once more denounced the Talmud 
before the Christian world, and, with the aid of the great 
inquisitor, Hochstraten, obtained from the Emperor 
Maximilian an edict authorizing him to examine the 
contents of the Jewish books and destroy those which 
blasphemed the Bible and the Catholic faith. From this 
decision the Jews appealed to Maximilian, and succeeded 
in having the power originally conferred upon Pfeffer- 
korn transferred to the archbishop elector of Mayence. 
As his advisors the archbishop took the doctors, the 
humanists, and among them Reuchlin, who felt no un- 
bounded sympathy for the Jews, having even attacked 
them once upon a time. But though he scorned the Jews 


— 131 — 


in general, he was a hebraizer for all that, and as such 
was doubtless more interested in the Talmud than in the 
inquisitorial tribunal with its arrests. He, therefore, vio- 
lently fought the projects of Pfefferkorn and the Domin- 
icans, and not only declared that the books of the Israel- 
ites ought to be preserved, but even maintained that 
chairs of Hebrew ought to be created in the universities. 
Reuchlin was accused of having sold himself for the gold 
of the Jews. He replied with a terrible pamphlet, The 
Mirror of the Eyes, which was condemned to be burned. 
Thenceforth the Jews, who were the original cause of the 
‘debate, were forgotten, the humanists and Dominicans 
alone occupied the stage, and the latter being given their 
final blow by the Letters of Obscurantists, were con- 
demned by the archbishop of Speyer and deserted by the 
pope, who, a few years previous, had granted the Ant- 
werp printers the privilege of printing the Talmud. 

But new times were approaching; the storm foreseen 
by everybody broke over the Church. Luther issued at 
Wittenberg his ninety-five theses, and Catholicism not 
only had to defend the position of its priests, but was 
also forced to fight for its essential tenets. For a moment 
the theologians forgot the Jews, they even forgot 
that the spreading movement took its roots in Hebrew 
sources. Nevertheless, the Reformation in Germany and 
England as well was one of those movements when Chris- 
tianity acquired new force in Jewish sources. The Jew- 
ish spirit triumphed with Protestantism. In certain re- 
spects the Reformation was a return to the ancient 
Ebionism of the evangelic ages. A great portion of the 
protestant sects was semi-Jewish, the anti-trinitarian 


— 132 — 


doctrines were later preached by the protestants, by 
Michel Servet and the two Socins of Sienna among oth- 
ers. Even in Transylvania anti-trinitarianism had 
flourished since the sixteenth century, and Seidelius had 
asserted the excellence of Judaism and of the Decalogue. 


_ The Gospels had been abandoned for the Old Testament 


Ss 


- and the Apocalypse. The influence exercised by these 


two books over the Lutherans, the Calvinists and espe- 
cially the Reformers and the English revolutionists, is 
well known. This influence continued to the nineteenth 
century; it produced the Methodists, Pietists, and 
particularly the Millenaries, the men of the Fifth Mon- 
archy, who in London dreamed with Venner of a repub- 
lic and allied themselves with the Levellers of John Lil- 
burne. 

Moreover, Protestantism, at its inception in Germany, 
endeavored to win over the Jews, and in this respect, the 
analogy between Luther and Mohammed is striking. 
Both had drawn their teachings from Hebrew sources, 
both wished to have the remains of Israel stamp with 
approval the new dogmas which they were formulating. 
This, in fact, presents the by no means least curious side 
of this nation’s history. While detested, despised, humil- 
lated, spat upon and bespattered, outraged, martyred, 
locked up and beaten, the Jew is still the one from whom 
Catholicism expects the ultimate reign of Jesus; the 
Church hopes for and demands the return of the Jews, 
which, for the Church, would mean the supreme testi- 
mony of the truth of its beliefs, and it is to the Jews, too, 
that the Lutherans and Calvinists appeal for it. It seems 
even as if the latter would have been completely con- 


— 133 — 


vinced of the justice of their cause had the sons of Jacob 
come to them. But the Jews had always been the stub- 
born people of the Scriptures, the people with the hard 
nape, rebellious against injunctions, tenacious, fearlessly 
faithful to its God and its Law. 

Luther’s preaching proved vain, and the feccbie 
monk issued a terrible pamphlet against the Jews.* “The 
Jews are brutes,” he said; “their synagogues are pig- 
sties, they ought to be burned, for Moses would do it, if 
he came back to this world. They drag in mire the divine 
words, they live by evil and plunders, they are wicked 
beasts that ought to be driven out like mad dogs.” 

In spite of these violent outbursts and excitement, in 
spite of the numerous controversies, which had taken © 
place between the protestants and Jews, the latter were 
* not ill-treated in Germany; people had no spare time tol 
_ busy themselves with them. On the one hand, the Luth- 
erans and Calvinists had their hands full with contro- 
versies among themselves ; the discussions over the Euch- 
arist, the impanation and invination over the trinity and 
the nature of Christ, sufficiently engaged their minds, 
and the sects were so numerous—Crypto-calvinists and 
Antinomists, Adiaphorists and Majorists, Osiandrists 
and Synergists, Memnonites and Synerchists, ete.—that 
the struggle of one with the other had to absorb all their 
activity. On the other hand, the social and religious 
conditions had quite changed, and this change was ad- 
vantageous to the Jews, who saw other preoccupations 
keep their enemies busy. 

Overwhelmed with miseries, decimated by war, ruined, 


*The Jews and their Lies. Wittenberg, 1558. 





— 134 — 


reduced to slavery, a prey to destitution and famine, the 
peasants of the sixteenth century no longer went for the 
Jewish money-lender or the Christian usurer, but they 
aimed higher; they attacked in the first place a whole 
class—of the rich—and then the social order as a whole. 
The revolt was general; at first it was the peasants of 
the Netherlands, then, and chiefly, those of Germany. 
All over the Empire they founded secret societies, the 
Bundschuh, the Poor Conrad, the Evangelic Confeder- 
ation. The peasants of Speyer and of the banks of the 
Rhine rose in 1503; the bands of Joss Fritz, in 1512; | 
the peasants of Austria and Hungary, in 1515; those of 
Suabia, in 1524; those of Suabia, Alsace and the Palat- 
inate, in 1525. All marched with the battle cry: “In 
Christ there is no longer master or slave.” The trades- 
men joined them; knights, like Goetz von Berlichingen, 
placed themselves at their head, and they massacred the 
nobles and set the castles and convents on fire. 

Munzer went even further; he fought not only against 
the barons, bishops and the rich, those “Kings of Moab,” 
but also against the very principle of authority. “No 
more authority,” he cried, “but that which is accepted 
and freely chosen.” In the code of twelve articles which 
he edited, he wanted the enfranchisement of the serfs, 
and when he mounted the scaffold on having lost the bat- 
tle of Frankenstein, he testified that it had been his 
desire to “establish equality in Christendom; that all 
things should be common and each and all have accord- 
ing to need.” The twelve articles were translated into 
French, and were spread abroad in Lorraine, where the 





1The confederate shoe. 


Ears | ae 


peasants rose up, too, at the moment when Hutter and 
Gabriel Scherding were going to establish the communi- 
ties of Moravia, when anabaptism was spreading in 
Switzerland, in Bohemia and in the Netherlands. In 
this formidable movement which convulsed a part of 
Europe until 1535, everywhere leaving deep traces, the 
Jews had been neglected, they had ceased to be the 
scapegoat, and the poor wretches, famished and misera- 
ble, no longer fell upon them. . 

Were they as happy in the Catholic countries? Yes, 
for there, too, they ceased to be the chief and sole ene- 
mies of the Church, and it was no longer they that were 
feared. 

The Protestants made people forget the Jews; the 
Protestants’ existence threatened the ancient conception 
of the Catholic State,and this secular conception brought 
upon the Protestants of France, Italy and Spain perse- 
cutions identical with those which the Jews had once un- 
dergone. 

Still, after the council of Trent, the reformed papacy 
once more turned to the Jews. The relaxation of relig- 
ious ideas brought in Italy a rapprochement between a 
certain class of Jews and the various classes of society. 
First, the humanists, the poets, visited the Jewish schol- 
ars, philosophers and physicians. This familiarity had 
begun in the fourteenth century, when Dante was seen to 
have for his friend the Jew Manoello, the cousin of the 
philosopher Giuda Romano; it continued in the fifteenth 
and the sixteenth centuries. Alemani was the teacher of 
Picondi Mirandola, Elias del Medigo publicly taught 
metaphysics in Padua and Florence, Leo the Hebrew 


— 136 — 


published his platonic dialogues on love. The Jewish 
printers, like the scholar Soncino, were in constant touch 
with the literature of the period; his library was the 
centre of Hebrew publications, and he even rivalled Aldo 
by publishing Greek authors. Hercules Gonzago, bishop 
of Mantua and disciple of the Jew Pomponazzo of Bolog- 
na, accepted the dedication of Jacob Mantino, who had 
translated the Compendium of Averroes, while other 
princes encouraged Abraham de Balmes in his work of 
translation.1 And not only the skeptical, even unbeliev- 
ing faction, of the Hellenists and Latinists, worshippers 
of Zeus and Aphrodite more than of Jesus, were on good 
terms with the Jews, but the lord and the bourgeois were 
likewise. “There are,” says the bishop Maiol, “persons, 
and often persons of quality, both men and women, who 
are so foolish and senseless as to take counsel with Jews 
over their most intimate affairs, to their own detriment. 
They (the Jews) are seen visiting the houses and palaces 
of the great ones, the dwellings of officers, councillors, 
secretaries, gentlemen, both in the city and country.” 
People did not content themselves with receiving Jews, 
they went to their houses, and, what is more, attended 
their religious ceremonies. “There are among us,” says 
again Maiol, “some who visit and superstitiously revere 
the synagogues”; and, addressing them, he exclaims: 
“You hear the Jews blow their trumpets on the days of 
their festivities, and you run with your families to look 
at them.” Thus it went on during the seventeenth cen- 
tury. In Ferrara they went to hear the sermons of Judah 


Abraham de Balmes translated into Latin the greatest part 
of Averroes’s writings, and his translations were in use in the 
Italian universities unti! the end of the seventeenth century. 





— 137 — 


Azael, and, in 1676, Innocent XI threatened with ex- 
communication and a fine of fifteen ducats those who 
frequented the synagogues. Did then the popes still fear 
the Jewish influence over their believers? After the ter- 
ible shock which had just disturbed the Church, they 
more than ever wished to guarantee security to the Cath- 
olic dogma. “The Talmud might be upheld,” the Coun- 
cil of Trent decreed, “if the wrong it contains were re- 
moved ; for portions of the Talmud can serve to defend 
the faith and to prove to the Jews their obstinacy.” The 
popes were of a different opinion. Julius III had the 
Talmud burned in Rome and Venice upon denunciation 
by Solomon Romano, a converted Jew; Paul IV con-| 
demned it again at the request of another convert, Vit- 
torio Eliano; Pius V and Clement VIII did likewise. 

During the dogmatic and theological reaction which 
followed the Reformation, the Roman Church, friendly to 
the Jews heretofore, came to be the only government, al- 
most the only power, systematically to persecute Juda- 
ism. Paul IV revived the ancient canonic laws and 
had the Marranos burned; Pius V_ banished 
the Jews from his domains, except from Rome and An- 
cona, after having issued his Constitution against the 
Jews, while the Spaniards, as they penetrated further 
into Italy, were driving them from Naples, Genoa and 
Milan. 

Another concern engaged the Church at all events. 
To persecute the Jews and burn their books was good ; 
to convert them was better. This had been the constant 
preoccupation of the theologians, christian doctors and 
the fathers. In the fifteenth century, the councils were 


— 138 — 


busying themselves with the conversion of the Jews. The 
Basel Council had ordered preaching to the Jews in Ger- 
many, and granted important privileges to the converts. 
The popes of the sixteenth century compelled the Jews 
to attend certain sermons and there had the good word 
preached to them by their own apostates. A third of the 
Jews of Rome had to be present in turn at the sermons. 
And while Sadolet was limiting at Avignon the pontif- 
ical privileges accorded the Jews, while a tax of ten 
ducats per year was levied on synagogues for the instruc- 
tion of those who intended to abjure Judaism, Paul IV 
was building houses of refuge where catechmmens were 
fed, dressed and cared for. 

The other sovereigns had not the same motives as the 
popes to attend to the Jews. And so, from the sixteenth 
century on, legislation against the Jews ceased. We find 
only the edict of Ferdinand I against Jewish usury—in 
Germany; a few decrees in Poland, and much later, the 
prohibitions of Louis XV and Louis XVI. Again to find 
anti-Jewish legislation, it will be necessary to study 
modern Russia, Rumania and Servia, which we shall 
shortly do. 

Anti-Judaism consisted chiefly in molestations and out- 
rages. The populace delighted in jecring the Jews, and 
the grandees often gave them a chance to do it. Leo X, 
that ostentatious pontiff, who was fond of buffoonery— 
he had at his side two monks to divert him with their 
pleasantries—would order races between Jews, and, being 
very shortsighted, would watch them, glass in hand, from 
the heights of his balconies. During the carnival in 
Rome the people would parody the burial of rabbis, and 


— 139 — 


a Jew would be marched through the city streets, 
mounted backward on a donkey and holding the ani- 
mal’s tail in his hand. On the ghetto-gates a sow was 
carved, and they were often covered with obscene groups, 
in which rabbis were represented.?, The sow symbolized 
the synagogue—exactly as with the Israelites the Roman 
Church was designated by the Hebrew name for hog— 
and the Jews were constantly reminded of it; a painter 
once even related at Wagenseil how he had painted a sow 
on the door-leaf of the arch of a synagogue which he was 
engaged to adorn. 

With the scholars, the learned and the theologians, 
anti-Judaism was becoming dogmatic and theoretical. 
True they wanted to bring the Jews back, but by soft 
measures. It was no longer a question of burning their 
books, but of translating them. It was said that now 
that the Christian faith had struck deep enough roots, 
there was no danger to believers from publishing He- 
brew books, as had been done in the case of those of the 





1K. Rodocanachi: Le Saint-Siege et les Juifs. Paris, 1891. 

? Luther: Tractatus de Schemhamphorasch. Altenburg (Opera, 
VY. VIII). These obscene groups were called Schemhamephor- 
asch. Its origin is as follows: these words Schemhamephor- 
asch mean “the name of God distinctly pronounced, the quadril- 
iteral name written and read with the four letters: yod, he, wau, 
he.” (Munk, Translation of the Guide of the Perplexed, v. I, 
p. 267, note 3). This is the name of which Maimonides says: 
“Before the creation of the world there were but the Most Holy 
One and His Name only.” (Guide of the Perplezxed, v. I, ch. 
61). This was the mysterious name; a magic power was ascribed 
to it, and the rabbis dressed up as magicians, who were repre- 
sented on the groups I have just mentioned, were understood 
to reveal the Name to the sow. Hence the appellation Schem- 
hamephorasch, 


— 140 — 


Arians and other heretics. Thus it would be possible to 
know the polemic practices of the Israelites, and it would 
thus be possible successfully to combat them. 


This study brought about a result quite different from 
that expected. By scrutinizing the Jewish spirit one 
came nearer to the Jews, and thereby became more sym- 
pathizing with them. Men, like Richard Simon, e. g., 
who had prepared themselves for scientific exegesis, _ 
through talmudists and hebraizing researches, could not 
look with hatred upon those from whom they held their 
knowledge. Others were anxious to know when the Jews 
would be called to Christian communion. The seven- 
teenth century was the most propitious time for the dis- 
putes over the recalling of the Jews. In France this 
question as to whether the Jews would be recalled at the 
end of the world or before it—divided Bossuet and the 
Figurists led by Duguet.t| In England the Millenaries 
proclaimed the return of the Jews.? They flourished 
particularly in the eighteenth century, in which Worth- 
ington, Bellamy, Winchester and Towers described the 
approaching times of the millenium. In Germany also 
this opinion had its advocates, such as Bengel, e. g. In 
France, not only did the convulsionaries of Saint-Menard 
proclaim the approaching entry of the Jews into the 
Church, but some were seen entertaining these dreams 





1On this point consult Duguet, Regles pour Vintelligence des 
Saintes Ecri ures, 1723. Bossuet, Discours sur l’ Histoire univer- 
sette, part II. Rondet, Dissertation sur le rappel des Juifs, 
Paris, 1778. Anonymous, Lettre sur le provche retour des 
Juifs, Paris, 1789, ete. 


2 Gregoire, Histoire des sectes religieuses, y. II (Paris, 1825). 


— 141 — 


until our days, and in 1809 President Agier fixed upon 
1849 as the year of the conversion of the Jews. 

All over Europe the Jews enjoyed the greatest tran- 
quillity during the eighteenth century. In Poland alone 
they fared badly for having once lived too well. They 
had been prosperous there up to the middle of the seven- 
teenth century. Rich, powerful, they had lived on an 
equal footing with the Christians, treated as though of 
the people amid whom they lived; but they could not 
help giving themselves up to their usual commerce, their 
vices, their passion for gold. Dominated by the Tal- 
mudists they succeeded in producing nothing beyond 
commentators of the Talmud. They were tax collectors, 
spirit—distillers, usurers, seigneurial stewards. They 
were the noblemen’s allies in their abominable work of 
oppression, and when the Cossacks of Ukraina and Little 
Russia had risen, under Chmielnicki, against Polish 
tyranny, the Jews, as accomplices of the lords, were the 
first to be massacred. It is said that over 100,000 of 
them were killed in ten years, but just as many Catholics 
and especially Jesuits, were killed as well. 

Elsewhere they were very prosperous. Thus, in the 
Ottoman Empire, they were simply liable to the tax on 
foreigners and subject to no other restrictive regulations, 
but nowhere was their prosperity so great as in the 
Netherlands and England. Marranos fleeing the Span- 
ish Inquisition had settled in the Netherlands in 1593, 
and thence settled a colony in Hamburg, then, later on, 
under Cromwell, one in England, whence they had been 
banished for centuries and whither Menasse-ben-Israel 
brought them back. The Dutch, as practical and cir- 


— 142 — 


cumspect a people as the English, utilized the commer- 
cial genius of the Jews and turned it to their own en- 
richment. Besides, indisputable affinities existed be- 
tween the spirit of these nations and the Jewish 
spirit, between the Israelite and the positive Dutchman 
or the Englishman, whose character, as Emerson says, 
can be brought to an irreducible dualism, which makes 
his nation one of greatest dreamers and most prac- 
tical people, a thing which may be said of Jews as well. 

In France Henry II. had authorized the Portuguese 
Jews to settle in Bordeaux, where, on the strength of 
the granted privileges, confirmed also by Henry IIL, 
Louis XIV., Louis XV. and Louis XVI., they acquired 
great wealth in maritime commerce. 

In the other cities of France there were few of them, 
and, besides, those residing in Paris or elsewhere had 
settled there only because of the administrative toler- 
ance. In Alsace alone there was a great agglomeration. 

Their splendid condition provoked no violent demon- 
strations; now and then protests would be heard, they 
would say with Expilly: “With infinite grief one sees 
how such base people, who had been received in the ea- 
pacity of slaves, possess costly furniture, lead a refined 
life, wear gold and silver on their garments, dress show- 
ily, perfume themselves, study instrumental and vocal 
music and ride horseback for mere diversion.” At the 
same time, greater and greater toleration was shown 
them from day to day; the world was drawing nearer to 
them. Were they, in turn, drawing nearer to the world? 
No. ‘They seemed more and more to attach themselves 
to their mystic patriotism; the further they went, the 


— 1438 — 


more the dreams of Kabbala haunted them, with ever re- 
newed confidence they awaited the Messiah, and never 
had the pseudo-Messiahs been received with so much 
enthusiasm as they were in the seventeenth and eigh- 
teenth centuries. The Kabbalists exhausted arithmetical 
combinations to calculate the exact date of the coming 
of him, who was so longed for. Toward 1666, the date 
most commonly designated as the sacred date, all Jews 
of the Orient were raised by the preachings of Sabbatai 
Zevi. From Smyrna, where Sabbatai had proclaimed 
himself Messiah, the movement spread to the Nether- 
lands, and England even, and everybody expected the 
restoration of Jerusalem and of the holy kingdom from 
the King of Kings, as Sabattai was called. The same 
enthusiasm was displayed in 1755 when Frank appeared 
in Podolia as the new Messiah. Numerous mystic sects 
formed around all these enlightened ones: that of Don- 
meh, which leaned towards the Mohammedans; that of 
the Chassidim, of the New Chassidim, and that of the 
Trinitarians, who approached Christianity in professing 
the dogma of a God at once one and triple.* 

These hopes which the illuminism of the Kabbalists 
entertained, helped to keep the Jews apart, but those 
who were not seduced by the speculations of dreamers, 
were weighed down by the yoke of the Talmud, a yoke 
at all events even ruder and more humiliating. So far 
from decreasing, the Talmudic tyranny had even in- 
creased since the sixteenth century. At this time Joseph 
Caro had edited the Shulchan Aruch, a Talmudic code, 





1Peter Beer, Le Judaisme et ses Sectes. 


— 144 — 


which—according to the traditions inculeated by the 
rabbinists—set up as laws the opinions of the doctors. 
Up to our time the European Jews had lived under the 
execrable oppression of these practices.1 The Polish 
Jews improved even upon Joseph Caro and refined the 
already enormous subtleties of the Shulchan Aruch by 
making additions thereto, and they introduced the 
method of Pilpul (pepper-grains) into their instruction. 


Accordingly, as the world grew kinder to them, the 
Jews—at least the masses—retired into themselves, 
straitened their prison, bound themselves with tighter 
bonds. Their decrepitude was unheard of, their intel- 
lectual sinking was equalled only by their moral debase- 
ment; this nation seemed dead. 

However, the reaction against the Talmud had pro- 
ceeded from the Jews themselves. Mordecai Kolkos,? 
1721. 
of Venice, had already published a book against the 
Mishna; in the seventeenth century, Uriel Acosta* vio- 
lently fought the rabbis, and Spinoza‘ exhibited little 
affection for them. But anti-talmudism displayed itself 
particularly in the eighteenth century, at first among 
the mystics, such as, e. g., the Zoharites, disciples of 
Franck, who declared themselves enemies of the doc- 
tors of the law. At any rate these opponents of the 
rabbanites were unable to extricate the Jews from their 
abjection. To begin this task, it was necessary for Moses 





1In Russia, Poland and Galicia they are extant even to-day. 
Consult Wolf, Bibliotheca Hebraea, v. II, p. 798. Hamburg, 
5 Heemplar vitae humanae. (Published by Limbroch, 1687). 
*Tractatus Theologico.-Politicus. 


— 145 — 


Mendelssohn, a Jew and philosopher at the same time, 
to array the Bible against the Talmud. His German 
version (1779)—-was a great revolution. It was the 
first blow dealt to the rabbinical authority. The 
Talmudists, too, who had once wished to kill Kolkos 
and Spinoza, violently attacked Mendelssohn, and pro- 
hibited, under penalty of excommunication, to read the 
Bible which he had translated. 


These outbursts of rage were of no avail. Mendels- 
sohn had followers: young men, his disciples, founded 
the periodical Meassef, which advocated the new Juda- 
ism, endeavored to snatch the Jews from their ignor- 
ance and humiliation, and prepared their moral emanci- 
pation. As for political emancipation, the humanitarian 
philosophy of the eighteenth century was working hard 
to bring it about. Though Voltaire was an ardent 
Judoephobe, the ideas which he and the Encyclopae- 
dists represented were not hostile to the Jews, as being 
ideas of liberty and universal equality. On the other 
hand, if the Jews really were isolated in the various 
states, they still had some points of contact with those 
surrounding them. 


Capitalism had by this time developed among the 
nations; stock-jobbing and speculation were born; the 
Christian financiers applied themselves to them with a 
zeal, just as they had applied themselves to usury, just 
as they had, in the capacity of farmers-general, collected 
imposts and taxes. The Jews could, therefore, take their 
place among those whom “discounts were enriching at 
the public’s expense, and who were masters of all pos- 


— 14646 — 


sessions of the French of all classes,” as already Saint 
Simon was saying. 

The economic objections which were raised against 
their possible emancipation had no longer the same im- 
port as in the Middle Ages, when the church wanted to 
make the Jews the only representatives of the class of 
money-brokers. As for the political objections, that 
they formed a State within the State, that their pres- 
ence as citizens could not be tolerated in a Christian 
society and was even injurious to it, they remained 
valid until the day when the French Revolution dealt 
its direct blow to the conception of a Christian State. 
And so Dohm, Mirabeau, Clermont-Tonnerre, the Abbot 
Grégoire were right with regard to Rewbel, Maury and 
the Prince de Broglie, and the Constituent Assembly 
obeyed the spirit which had guided it since its inception 
when it declared on September 27, 1791, that the Jews 
would enjoy in France the rights of actual citizens. 
The Jews were on the threshold to society. 


-- 147 — 


CHAPTER VII. 
ANTI-JUDAIC LITERATURE AND THE PREJUDICES. 


Anti-Judaism of the Pen and its Forms.—Theological 
Anti-Judaism.—The Transformation of Christian 
Apologetics.—Judaization and its Enemies.—An- 
selm of Canterbury, Isidore of Seville—Pierre de 
Blois—Alain de Lille—The Study of Jewish 
Books.—Raymond de Penaforte and the Domini- 
cans.—Raymund Martin and the Pugio Fidet.— 
Nicholas de Lyra and His Influence.—Anti-Jewish 
Theological Literature and the Conversions.— 
Nicholas de Cusa.—The Converted Jews and Their 
Role.—Paul de Santa Maria, Alfonso of Valladolid. 
—Anti-Talmudism and the Converts: Pfefferkorn. 
—The Controversies Over the Talmud and the Jew- 
ish Religion.—Controversies of Paris, Barcelona 
and Tortosa.—Nicholas Donin, Pablo Christiani 
and Geronimo de Santa Fé.—The Euxtractiones Tal- 
mut.—Social Anti-Judaism.—Agobard, Amolon, 
Peter the Venerable, Simon Maiol.—Polemic Anti- 
Judaism.—Alonzo da Spina.—Le Livre de l’Albo- 
raique.—Pierre de Lancre.—Francisco de Torre- 
joncillo and the Centinela Contra Judios.—Polemic 
Anti-Judaism and the Prejudices.—The Jews and 
the Accursed Races.—Jews, Templars and Sorcer- 
ers.—Ritual Murder.—The Defense of the Jews.— 
Jacob ben Ruben, Moses Cohen of Tordesillas, 


4 


— 148 — 


Shem-Tob ben Isaac Shaprut.—Jewish Polemic 
Literature in Spain in the Fifteenth Century.— — 
Anti-Christianity—Chasdai Orescas and Joseph 
Ibn Shem Tob.—The Attacks Against the New 
Testament.—The Nizzachon and The Book of Jo- 
seph the Zealot—The Toldoth Jesho.—Attacks 
Against the Apostates—Isaac Pulgar, Don Vidal 
Ibn Labi—Transformation of. Scriptural Anti- 
Judaism in the Seventeenth Century.—The Con- 
verters.—The Hebraizers and the Exegetists: Bux- 
torf and Richard Simon.—Wagenseil, Voetius, 
Bartolocci—Hisenmenger.—John Dury.—The Re- 
lationship and Similarity of Anti-Jewish Works. 
The Imitators—The Ancient Literary Anti-Juda- 
ism and the Modern Antisemitism.—Their Affini- 
ties. 


We have studied only the legal and the popular anti- 
Judaism from the eighth century to the French Revolu- 
tion. We have seen how anti-Jewish legislation, at first 
canonic and later civil, was little by little instituted. 
We have shown how the populace had been partly pre- 
pared by the decrees of the popes, kings and republics, to 
hate and abuse the Jews, and how far this exasperation 
of the people, the massacres it committed, the insults 
and outrages it showered, had given the counter-blow 
to this legislation. We have shown that up to the fif- 
teenth century, the accusations weighing over the Jews, 
had grown each year, so that they had reached their 
maximum at this period, and from then on went de- 
creasing, that the codes had ceased to be applied rigor- 


— 149 — 


ously, that customs had gradually fallen into disuse, that 
few, if at all, new laws were made, and that the Jew 
thus marched towards liberation. 

However, there is a kind of anti-Judaism to which we 
have paid no special attention, and which we must here- 
after examine. While the Church and the monarchies 
issued laws against the Jews, the theologians, philoso- 
phers, poets, and historians were writing about them. It 
is the role, the working and the importance of this anti- 
Judaism of the pen that we still have to examine. 

It was not born under the same influences; diverse 
causes engendered it, and according to these causes it 
was theological or social, dogmatic or even polemic. 
Not that all these anti-Jewish writings can be classified 
under one category to the exclusion of any other; on the 
contrary, there are few of them that can be referred ex- 
clusively to one of these types, and yet, according to their 
principal tendency, they can be registered under one of 
the rubrics that I have just indicated. Theological anti- 
Judaism alone has produced clearly cut works, written 
without social cares, and these works, however little char- 
acteristic they may be, may be dogmatic and polemic 
at the same time. 

Theological anti-Judaism, chronologically the first, 
naturally had apologetic ways at its inception; it could 
not be otherwise as Judaism was fought only to glorify 
the Christian faith and prove its excellence. As we have 
said, they ceased producing apologetic writings towards 
the end of the fourth century; the young church, in the 
intoxication of its triumph, did no longer think it neces- 
sary to prove its superiority, and as representatives of 


the apologetic manner, we find in the fifth century only 
the Altercation of Simon and Theopilus of Evagrivs,* 
in which the Altercation of Jason and Papiscus of Aris- 
to of Pella was imitated and even plagiarized ; after that 
one has to come to the seventh century to find the three 
books of Isidore of Seville directed against the Jews.? 

When scholasticism was born, apologetics reappeared. 
Scholasticism from its very start was a servant-maid of 
the dogma, but a reasoning servant that attempted to ex- 
vplain the Trinity metaphysically, and the discussions on 
nominalism and realism were of such importance during 
the Middle Ages, only because these two theories were 
applied to the interpretation of the Trinity. The whole 
of metaphysics of this time turned around the nature 
and divinity of Christ. Hence the importance for the 
scholastic theologians of defending this divinity against 
those even who denied it; and were not the Jews just 
those whose denial was most stubborn? It was neces- 
sary, therefore, to convince these obstinates, and thus the 
apologies sprang up again, and all or nearly all of them 
were addressed to the Jews. 

They had two ends in view: they defended thie Cath- 
olic dogmas and symbols, and they combatted Judaism. 
They set themselves against that judaizing which the 
church, its doctors, philosophers and apologists had al- 
ways feared, imagining the Jew as a sort of wolf that 
prowled around the sheep-fold in order to carry the 
sheep away from a happy life. These were the senti- 





Consult the Spicilegium of Achery, vols. X and XV. 
? Isidore of Seville, De Fide Catholica ex vetere et novo Testa- 
mento contra Judaeos (Opera, vol. VII). Migne, P. L., Ixxxiii. 


— 151 — 


ments that guided, e. g., Cedrenust and Theophanes* 
when they wrote their ontra Judaeos, and Gilbert 
Crépin, abbot of Westminster, in his Disputatio Judet 
cum Christiano de fide Christiana.* 

The form of these writings was little varied; they 
reproduced almost servilely the classic arguments of the 
Fathers of the Church, and their wording followed 
similar patterns. To analyze one of them means analyz- 
ing all. Thus, e. g., Pierre de Blois’s Against the Per- 
fidy of the Jews,* enumerated through thirty chapters 
the testimonies which the Old Testament, and especially 
the prophets, contain in favor of the divine Trinity and 
Unity, of the Father and the Son, of the Holy Spirit, 
of the Messianism of Jesus Christ, of the Davidic descent 
of the Son of Man, and of his incarnation. He ended, 
by proving, on the basis of the same authorities, that 
the Law had been transmitted to the Gentiles, that the 
Jews had been doomed to reprobation, but that the rem- 
nants of Israel would nevertheless one day be converted 
and saved. Guibert de Nogent, in his De Incarnatione 
adversus Judaeos,® Rupert in his Annulus sivedialogus 
inter Christianum et Judeum de fider sacramentis ;* 
Alain de Lille in his De Fide Catholica;? many others 
to enumerate whom would be tiresome, proceeded in the 





Pherae contra Judacos, Opera, Editio Basileensis, p. 
180. 

2? Contra Judaeos. Lib. VI. 

“ Mignes Pri Chi bx: 

* Liber contra perfidia Tudaeorum. Opera, Paris, 1519. 

°> Opera, Paris, 1651. 

1 Migne, P. L., CLXX. 

*Migne, P. L., CCX. 


— 18 — 


same way, developing the same arguments, dwelling 
upon the same texts, resorting to the same interpreta- 
tions. As a whole, all this literature was one of extreme 
mediocrity; I know little that is more inane, and 
Anselm of Canterbury himself failed to make it more 
interesting when he composed his De Fide seu de Incar- 
natione verbis contra Judaeos. 

Yet these writings, discussions, fictitious dialogues 
hardly, if at all, attained their object. They were con- 
sulted by clergymen only, and were thus directed at 
converts; rabbis read them in very rare cases; their 
own biblical exegesis and science being much superior 
to those of the good monks, these latter rarely were at 
an advantage. At all events they never convinced those 
whom they were to convince, and they could not effec- 
tively fight the Jews, as they did not know the taldumic 
and exegetic commentaries, from which the Jews drew 
their weapons and forces. Things changed in the thir- 
teenth century. The works of Jewish philosophers had 
spread and exercised considerable influence on the schol- 
asticism of the time; men like Alexandre de Hales had 
read Maimonides (Rabbi Moses) and Ibn Gebirol (Avi 
cebron), and they bore the impress of the teachings ex- 
posed by the Guide of the Perplexed and the Fountain 
of Infe. Curiosity was awakened, people wanted to know 
Jewish thought and dialectics, at first for philosophical 
motives, then to fight against the Jews with better suc- 
cess. 

The dominican Raymond de Penaforte, confessor of 
James I. of Aragon, and a great converter of the Jews, 
bade the Dominicans to learn Hebrew and Arabic to be 


able better to persuade and battle with the Jews. He 
established schools for the instruction of monks in these 
two languages and was the pioneer of Hebrew and 
Arabic studies in Spain. He thus started a line of 
apologists who were no longer contented with collecting 
the passages of the Old Testament that foreshadowed 
the Trinity or prophesied the Messiah, but who endea- 
vored to refute the rabbinical books and Talmudic asser- 
tions. 

All these shields, ramparts, strongholds of faith, a 
host of treatises and demonstrations, came from this 
movement. In these pamphlets the Jews were “slain 
with their own glaive,” “pierced with their own sword,” 
t. @., they were being convinced of their ignominy and 
convicted of falsehoods by means of their own argumen- 
tation, such as the monks found it, or at least thought 
they found it, in the Talmud. 

The best known among all these theological lampoons 
are those published by the dominican Raymund Martin, 
“a man as remarkable for his knowledge of Hebrew and 
Arabic writings as for that of Latin works.” These 
squibs bear characteristic enough titles: Capistrum 
Judaeorum (Muzzle of the Jews) and Pugio Fidei (Dag- 
ger of the Faith).? The second had the greatest circu- 
lation. “It is well,’ Raymund Martin said therein, 
“that the Christians take in hand the sword of their 
enemies, the Jews, to strike them with it?” Starting 





? Augustin Giustiniani, Linguae Hebreae (1656). 

*Pugio Fidei (Paris, 1651). (Cf. Quetif, Bibl. Scriptorum 
dominicanorum, vy. I, p. 396, and the edition of Carpzon, Leipzig, 
1687). 


— 154 — 


thence and with this very wide-spread notion that God 
had given Moses an oral law as commentary to the writ- 
ten law and containing the revelation of the Trinity and 
the divinity of Jesus, Martin tried to prove, by means 
of Biblical, Talmudic and Kabbalistic texts, that the 
Messiah had come and that the tenets of Catholicism 
were irrefutable. In two chapters,* he simultaneously 
fell upon Judaism, which he represented as reprobate 
and abominable. 

During the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the 
Pugio Fidei was quite in vogue among the monks, espe- 
cially the Dominicans, ardent defenders of the faith. It 
was studied, consulted, plagiarized. The number of 
writings which were inspired by Raymund Martin and 
for which the Pugio Fidei served as the prototype and 
even mould, was considerable. Among others those of 
Porchet Salvaticus,t Pierre de Barcelona,? and Pietro 
Galatini® may be named. 

Still even Martin’s knowledge was not perfect, and 
as we shall presently see, the rabbis very often worsted 
their opponents in their controversies. The anti-Jews 
needed better weapons: the Franciscan, Nicholasde Lyra, 
supplied them. He had made a careful study of rab- 
binical literature, and his hebraic attainments, their 
extent, variety and solidity led to the belief that he was 





’ Chh. XXI-XXII, de Reprobatione et Faetore doctrinae Inu- 
dacorum. 

1 Victoria adversus impios Hebreos et sacris litteris (Paris, 
1629). Wolf, Bibl. Hebr. v. I, p. 1124. 

2? Consult Fabricius, Bibliotheca Latina, on Peter of Barcelona 
(Petrus Barcinonensis). 

* De Arcanis catholicae veritatis libris (Sorcino, 1518). 


— 155 — 


of Jewish origin, which is of little probability. At 
all events, he was the precursor of modern exegesis, 
which is the daughter of Jewish thought and whose ra- 
tionalism is purely Jewish; he was the ancestor of 
Richard Simon. Nicholas de Lyra declared that the 
literal explanation of the text of the Scriptures should 
form the foundation of ecclesiastic science, and that the 
text and its meaning once established four meanings 
should be derived therefrom: the literal, allegoric, moral 
and anagogic.* Nicholas de Lyra expounded his re- 
searches in the Postilla and the Moralitates, collected 
and recast later into a larger work. Hereafter this was 
the arsenal to draw upon in the polemics against the 
Jews, as well as for the defense of the Gospels against 
the Jewish attacks, for Nicholas de Lyra had refuted, 
in his De Messia,’ the criticisms passed on the Old Tes- 
tament by the Jews. Numerous editions of Nicholas 
de Lyra’s works appeared, commentaries, notes and addi- 
tious thereto were made, and in the matter of exegesis 
even Luther was his pupil. 

But praiseworthy as it was to combat the Jews, it was 
still more meritorious to convince them, and most of the 
polemist monks did not forget that the conversion of 








*Throughout the Middle Ages they believed in this fourfold 
meaning of the Scriptures, and the following distict expressed 
its import: 

Littera gesta docet, quid credas, allegoria ; 
Moralis, quid agass quo tendas anagogia. 

5 Postillae perpetuae in universa Biblia (Rome, 1471, vol. 5.) 

*De Messia, eiusque adventu practerito tractatus una cum 
responsione ad Judaei argumenta XIV contra veritatem evan- 
geliorum (Venice, 1481). 


— 156 — 


Judah was one of the aims of the church. While the 
councils took steps to convert the Jews, the writers, on 
their part, endeavored to be convincing, several of them, ~ 
the more practical, went so far as to seek ground for 
reconciliation. So, e. g., by making certain concessions 
‘--he was even ready to accept circumcision—Nicholas 
de Cusa wanted to unite all religions into one, with the 
Trinity as its principal dogma. The ancient “obstinatio 
Judaeorum” which maintained divine unity resisted 
these attempts, and the overtures of the Christians were 
generally received with disfavor. However, conversions 
were not infrequent, and I mean not only those brought 
about by violence, but also those obtained by persuasion. 
These converted Jews played a very great role in the 
anti-Jewish literature as well as in the history of the 
persecutions. ‘Toward their coreligionists they proved 
themselves the most cruel, unjust and treacherous of 
adversaries. This is generally characteristic of converts, 
and the Arabs converted to Christianity or Christians 
turned to Islam witness that this rule allows of very few 
exceptions. 

A host of sentiments united in maintaining this bilious 
disposition among the apostates. Above all they wished 
to give proof of their sincerity: they felt that a sort of 
suspicion surrounded them at entering into the Chris- 
tian world, and the affectation of piety which they pro- 
claimed did not seem sufficient to them to dispel the 
suspicions. 

Nothing did they fear so much as the accusation of 
lukewarmness or sympathy with their former brethren, 
and the way in which the Inquisition treated those it 


— 17 — 


deemed relapsers, was not caiculated todiminish the fears 
entertained by the proselytes. Accordingly, they simu- 
lated an excess of zeal which in many, if not all, upheld 
a genuine faith. Some of them, convinced of having 
found salvation in their conversion, made even efforts 
to win over their coreligionists to the Christian faith; 
among these the church found several of its most fear- 
less and eagerly listened to converters.1_ They did not 
stop at publishing apologies; in the churches they 
preached to the Jews whom the canonic decrees obliged 
to attend sermons as obedient auditors. Such 
were Samuel Nachmiast baptized under the name of 
Morosini; Joseph Tzarphati, who assumed the name 
Monte at his baptism ;? the rabbi Weidnerus, who con- 
vinced a great number of the Jews of Prague of the ex- 
cellence of the Trinity. Some even informed against the 
Jews that they had abandoned the rigors of the eccle- 
siastical and civil laws. About 1475, for instance, Peter 
Schwartz and Hans Bayol, both converted Jews, insti- 
gated the inhabitants of Ratisbon to sack the Ghetto; 
in Spain, Paul de Santa-Maria instigated Henry III. of 
Castile to take measures against the Jews. This Paul 
de Santa-Maria, previously known under the name of 
Solomon Levi of Burgos, was not an ordinary personal- 
ity. A very pious, very learned rabbi, he abjured at 
the age of forty, after the massacres of 1391, and was 





1 For the antisemitic literature of the Jewish apostates con- 
sult Wolf, Biodl. Hebr., v. I. 

1 Via della Fede (Wolf, Bibl. Hebr., p. 1010). 

1 Treatise on the Confusion of the Jews. (Wolf, Bibl. Hebr., 
p. 1010). 


— 158 — 


baptized along with his brother and four of his sons. He 
studied theology at Paris, was ordained priest, became 
bishop of Cartagena and afterwards chancellor of Cas- 
tile. He published an Haamination of the Holy Writ, 
—a dialogue between the infidel Saiil and the convert 
Paul,—and issued an edition of Nicholas de Lyra’s Pos- 
tilla, supplemented by his Additiones and glosses. He 
did not stop at that in his activity. He is generally 
found the instigator in all the persecutions which befell 
the Jews of his time, and he hunted the synagogue with 
a ferocious hatred; and yet in his works he confined 
himself to theologie polemics.* 

But not all converts were like Paul de Santa-Maria. 
To believe Poggio who had learned Hebrew from a bap- 
tized Jew, they were, generally speaking, little educated, 
and of mediocre intelligence: “Stupid, say he, “crazy 
and ignorant as are, as a rule, the Jews who baptize.” 
This class of catechumens proved itself the most spite- 
ful. Those, however, who constituted it, were provoked 
by their coreligionists, who bitterly hated their apostates 
and missed no opportunity to abuse them, so that nu- 
merous laws had to be promulgated forbidding the Jews 
to throw stones at the renegades and soil their clothes 
with oil and fetid liquids. When unable to maltreat them 
the Jews would insult and rail at the converts. The 
new Christians replied to these insults by publishing 
satires on the rabbis, as did Don Pedro Ferrus and 
Diego of Valencia, or by abusing their opponents in 
bulky dogmatic treatises, in the manner of Victor de 


1Cf. Wolf, Bibl. Hebr., I, p. 1004; and Joseph Rodriguez de 
Castro, Bibliotheca espanola (Madrid, 1781), vol. I, p. 235. 





— 189 — 


Carben.? They did not forget to resort to theologic dem- 
onstration, but often preferred invention and even cal- 
umny. At times they would unite both methods, as in 
the case of Alfonso of Valladolid (Abner of Burgos), 
who published simultaneously concordances of the law 
and treatises of violent polemics: the Book of God’s Bat- 
tles and the Mirror of Justice 1.) 

But the Talmud was the great antagonist of the con- 
verts, and one that had to withstand most of their wrath. 
They constantly denounced it before the inquisitors, the 
king, the emperor, the pope. The Talmud was the ex- 
ecrable book, the receptacle of the most hideous abuses 
of Jesus, the Trinity and the Christians ; against it Pedro 
de la Caballeria wrote his Wrath of Christ Against the 
Jews, Pfefferkorn, his Enemy of the Jews,’ in which 
he congratulated himself upon “having withdrawn from 
the dirty and pestilential mire of the Jews,” and Jerome 
of Santa Fé, his Hebreomastyx.* The Catholic theolo- 
gians followed the example of the converts, most fre- 
quently they had about the Talmud no other notions be- 
yond those given them by the converts. 

Usually auto-da-fés followed these denunciations of 
the Talmud, but they were, as a rule, preceded by a dis- 





?Three treatises against the Jews 1. Propugnaculum fidei 
christianae (1510); 2. Judaeorum erroris et moris (Cologne, 
1509) ; 3. De vita et moribus Judaeorum (Paris, 1511). Cf. 
Wolf, Bibl. Hebr., v. IV, p. 578. 

1 Bibliotheque Nationale, manuscript of Spanish origin, No. 
43; cf. Isidore Loeb, Revue des Etudes Juives, v. XVIII). 

2 Tractatus Zelus christi contra Judaeos, Saracenos et infi- 
deles (Venice, 1542). 

5’ Hostis Judaeorum (Cologne, 1509). 

‘Hebreomastyx (Frankfort, 1601). 


— 160 — 


putation. This custom of disputations goes back to deep 
antiquity. We know that already the Hebrew doctors 
held disputations with the apostles. On several occa- 
sions rabbis and monks were seen contending in elo- 
quence in the presence of the Emperors of Rome and 
Byzantium in order to convince their audience of the 
excellence of their cause, and the Chazar King made 
up his mind to embrace Judaism only after a discussion, 
in which a Jew, a Christian and a Mohammedan took 
part, so, at least, the legend relates.1 These discussions 
were, however, rarely public, the church feared their 
consequences ; it feared Jewish subtlety, clever at finding 
objections which embarrassed the defenders of the Catho- 
lic faith and troubled the believer. There remained in 
use only private discussions between ecclesiastical dig- 
nitaries and Talmudists, and few auditors were admitted 
to these meetings, except under rare and important cir- 
cumstances, in which cases a legal sanction followed the 
dispute. In these queer disputes, in which one side acted 
as judge at the same time, the Jews were, in general, the 
stronger. Their more concise dialectics, their more 
genuine knowledge, their more serious and subtle ex- 
egesis, gave them an easy advantage. In spite of this, or 
rather, because of this, the Jews were very prudent in 
their assertions, they appeared in the most courteous 
light, and heeded those melancholy words of Moses 
Cohen of Tordesillas, addressed to his brethren: 





1Juda Hallevy, Liber Cosri. Translated by John Buxtorf, 
Jr., 1660—a German translation with an introduction was pub- 
lished by H. Jolowicz and D. Cassel, Das Buch Kuzari, 1841, 
1853. 


— 161 — 


“Never let your zeal carry you away to the point of ut- 
tering stinging words, for the Christians hold the power 
and may silence the truth with fist-blows.” These coun- 
sels were followed, but in spite of the precautions taken, 
at the end of the argument the Jew, who was always 
wrong in the end, was beaten to death. 

However, the informers were usually commanded to 
sustain their charges. In 1239, a converted Jew, Nich- 
olas Donin of La Rochelle, brought before the pope, 
Gregory IX., a charge against the Talmud. Gregory 
ordered the copies of the book to be seized and an in- 
quest made. Bulls were sent out to the bishops of 
France, England, Castile and Aragon. Eudes de 
Chateauroux, chancellor of the University of Paris, di- 
rected the investigation in France, the only country 
where the bulls had produced an effect. The disputa- 
tion was ordered, and took place in 1240, between the 
informer, Nicholas Donin, and four rabbis: Yechiel of 
Paris, Jehuda ben David Melun, Samuel ben Solomon, 
and Moses of Coucy. The discussion was long, but 
Donin’s skill finally divided the rabbis; the Talmud was 
condemned and burned a few years later. 

In 1263, Raimond de Penaforte arranged at the Ara- 
gonian court a dispute between the rabbis, Nachmani of 
Girone (Bonastruc de Porta), and the Dominion, Pablo 
Christiani, a converted Jew and a zealous converter. 
This time Nachmani was victorious after a four-day 
disputation on the coming of Messiah, on the divinity 
of Jesus, and the Talmud. The king himself accorded 
him an audience, received him very cordially and loaded 
him with presents. But such victories were excepticnal, 


— 162 — 


as the Jewish books were most frequently condemned 
by the judges beforehand, whatever the skill of their 
defenders. Thus, a baptized Jew, Joshua Lorqui d’Al- 
canis, known under the name of Geronimo de Santa Fé, 
physician to the anti-pope Benedict XIII., called, with 
a view to making converts, a debate which opened in 
1417 at Tortosa. Geronimo exerted’ himself to prove 
by Talmudic texts that Messiah had come and that it 
was certainly Jesus. As adversaries he had the most 
famous doctors of Spain, Don Vidal Benveniste ibn 
Albi, Joseph Albo, Zerachya Halevi Saladin, Astruc 
Levi of Daroque and Bonastruce of Girone. The con- 
troversy took place before the anti-pope, surrounded by 
his cardinals; it lasted sixty days, but no conversions 
resulting from it Geronimo de Santa Fé issued an ad- 
dress to the court against the Talmud, and the reading of 
it was forbidden. 

These controversies increased in number in Spain dur- 
ing the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Thus the 
convert Alfonso of Valladolid had a dispute with his 
former coreligionists at Valladolid; John of Valladolid, 
another convert, had a dispute with Moses Cohen de 
Tordesillas on the proofs of the Christian faith contained 
in the Old Testament, but was defeated in the contest; 
Shem-Tob ben Isaac Shaprut had at Pampeluna a con- 
troversy on the original sin and redemption, with the 
cardinal Pedro de Luna, later anti-pope Benedict XIII. 
Many more might be mentioned, all of them proving 
what amount of trouble the Jews were giving the church 
and how eagerly conversion was desired and solicited. 
Still all these disputes were courteous up to the moment 


— 1638 — 


the Inquisition was introduced. The theologians made 
every effort to prepare priests and monks so as to pre- 
vent the Catholic faith from suffering a blow, and for 
this purpose, they composed extracts that were intended 
to enlighten the defenders of Christ on the faults found 
with the Talmud. A few of these guides have been pre- 
served, as, e. g., the Hatractiones Talmut, edited by 
Eudes de Chateauroux, after the auto-da-fé of 1242, and 
the Censura et Confutatio libri Talmut,’ a work com- 
posed by Antonio d’Avila, and a prior of the convent of 
the Holy Cross of Segovia, and addressed to Thomas 
de Torquemada. All these manuals were placed in the 
hands of the Spanish inquisitors and served for refer- 
ence in the trials of the Marranos and Jews. 

But alongside of the Jew, considered the enemy of 
Jesus and the foe of Christianity, there was the Jew, 
the usurer, the money-dealer, he upon whom fell a part 
of the hatred of the oppressed and the poor, he whom 
the rising bourgeoisie was beginning to envy and hate. 
I have pictured that Jew at work, how he had come to 
the exclusive pursuit of gold, and how he became the 
object of popular passions as a sort of victim of expia- 
tion, the scape-goat for all the sins of a society that was 
no better than he. If the populace oftenest killed the 
deicide, it also fell upon the clipper of ducats; its anti- 
Judaism was not religious only, but social as well. The 
case was similar with anti-Judaism of the pen. If certain 
bishops and ecclesiastical writers confined themselves 
to defending the symbols of their faith against Jewish 


*Ms. 351 of the Spanish collection of the Bibliotheque Na- 
tionale (Cf. Loeb, Revue des Etudes Juives vy. XVIII). 








— 1644 — 


exegesis, if they fought against this Jewish spirit,—the 
terror of the church that was, nevertheless, deeply im- 
pregnated with this spirit,—others followed the example 
of the Fathers who had thundered against Jewish rapa- 
ity and the rapacity of the rich in general. To the 
theological treatises issued by them they added ad- 
dresses to the court intended to combat the lenders on 
pawned articles, those who lived by usury. Agobard,* 
Amolon,? Rigord,* Pierre de Cluny,* Simon Maiol® were 
these anti-Jews. They were among those whom the 
wealth of the Jews revolted more than their ungodliness, 
who were more scandalized by their luxury than by their 
blasphemies. No doubt, for them the Jews were the 
most hateful adversaries of the truth, the worst of the 
unbelievers ;° they are the enemies of God and Jesus 
Christ; they call the apostles apostates; they scoff at 
the Bible of the Septuagint ;1 in their daily prayers they 
curse the Saviour under the name of the Nazarene; they 
build new synagogues as if to insult the Christian re- 
ligion; they Judaize the believers, they preach the Sab- 
bath to them and they persuade them to take a rest 
on Sabbath. But, besides, the Jews oppress the people ; 
they hoard up wealth that is the fruit of usury and plun- 





De Insolentia Judaeorum (Patrologie latine v. CIV). 

*Hexistola sew liber contra Judacos (Patrologie latine, v. 
CXVI). 

5 Gesta Philippi Augusti, 12-16. 

“Tractatus adversus Judaeorum inveteratam duritiam (Bibli- 
otheque des Peres latins. Lyons). 

5 Les Jours caniculaires (Dierum canicularium) translated 
by F. de Rosset (Paris, 1612). 

®° Agobard, loc. cit. 

1 Amolon, loc. cit, 


— 165 — 


der ;? they hold the Christians in servitude; they pos- 
sess enormous treasures in the cities which had received 
them, e. g., in Paris and Lyons; they commit larceny, 
they acquire money by evil methods; “everything passes 
through their hands, they insinuate themselves into 
houses and gain confidence; by their usury they draw 
the sap, the blood and the natural vigor of the Chris- 
tians.”* They sell counterfeit jewels, they receive stolen 
goods, they coin base money, cannot be trusted, collect 
their debts twice over. In brief, “there is no wicked- 
ness in the world which the Jews are not guilty of, so 
that they seem to aim at nothing but the Christians’ 
rains © 

To this picture of the perfidia Judaeorum, the anti- 
Jews, like Maiol or Luther,® added abundant abuse, and 
soon anti-Judaism became purely polemic. The theo- 
logical and social considerations now occupy but a lim- 
ited place in the books of Alonzo da Spina,! especially 
Pierre de Lancre? and Francisco de Torrejoncillo.® 
The Sentinel Against the Jews, a pamphlet by the last 
named, is particularly curious. Written in Spain at the 
beginning of the seventeenth century, it was aimed at 
the Marranos, who, it was said, invaded all the civil and 





? Pierre de Cluny, lve. cit. 

* Agobard, loc. cit.—Rigard, loc. cit. 

5S. Maiol, loc. cit. 

*The Jews and their falsehoods (Wittenberg, 1558). 

1 Fortalitium Fidei (Nurenberg, 1494). Wolf, Bibl. Hebr., 
v. I, p: 2116: 

* L’Incredulite et mecreance du sortilege pleinement convain- 
cue (1622). 

* Centinela contra Judios (Cf. Loeb, Revue des Etudes Juives, 
Vs, Ve) 


— 166 — 


religious offices. It consisted of fourteen books and 
showed that the Jews were presumptuous and liars, that 
they were traitors, that they were despised and dejected, 
that those favoring them came to an evil end, that 
neither they nor their work could be trusted, that they 
were turbulent, self-conceited, seditious, that the church 
preserved them only that in their midst might be born 
their Messiah the anti-Christ, who will be vanquished 
to allow Israel to recognize his error. At any rate Fran- 
cisco de Torrejoncillo may be considered amiable if one 
compare his pamphlet with a singular little work of the 
same epoch bearing the title, Book of the Alboraique.* 
The Alboraique was Mohamet’s mount, a queer animal, 
neither horse, nor mule, nor ox, nor donkey; to this 
singular animal the author of the squib likens the new 
Christians, the Marranos, who are Alboraiques as being 
neither Jews nor Christians. Thereupon the pamph- 
leteer declares that the Jews or Marranos possess all the 
characteristics of the Alboraique, and he lays down one 
of the most extraordinary parallels. Mohamet’s mount 
had the ears of a harrier, but the Alboraiques are dogs ; 
it had the body of an ox, but the Alboraiques think only 
of the material welfare and of filling their stomach; it 
had a serpent’s tail, but the Alboraiques spread the 
poison of heresy. 

Had all the polemists limited themselves to allegorical 
comparisons, not much harm would have come to the 
Jews. But some did not hesitate to relate the most ex- 
traordinary things about these accursed ones, and the 





1 Bibliotheque Nationale, Spanish section, Ms. No. 356 (Loeb, 
Revue des Etudes Juives v. XVIII). 


— 167 — 


anti-Jewish polemic literature enregistered all the 
popular prejudices, even made them worse; it originated 
- new ones and perpetuated them in all instances. The 
wildest stories about the Jews were circulated; they 
were represented with monstrous features; the most 
abominable deformities, the blackest vices, the most 
heinous crimes, the most despicable habits were attri- 
buted to them. They have, so it was declared, the fig- 
ure of a he-goat, they have horns and a caudal append- 
age,' they are subject to quinsy, to scrofula, to blood-flux, 
stinking infirmities which make them lower their heads,* 
they have hemorrhoids, bloody sores on their hands, they 
cannot spit; at night their tongue is overrun with worms. 
The belief in these diseases peculiar to the Jews had come 
from Spain,in the fourteenth century ; later on they were 
arranged in lists, the oldest of which belongs to 1634. In 
these lists, to each of the twelve tribes its special disease 
is assigned. Those of Reuben’s tribe, is was said, had 
laid their hands on Jesus, accordingly their hands dry 
up whatever they touch; those of Simeon’s tribe had 
nailed Jesus,—and they have bloody stains on their feet 
four times a year; “let his blood fall upon us!” they 
all had cried, and, therefore, their children are born with 
a bloody arm and on Holy Friday they throw blood 
from their anus. Purely mystical, then, was the origin 
of this belief in the maladies of the Jews; it may even 
be said that it was the rhetorical figures and allegorical 
similes, only objectified and made concrete, that gave 
rise to these fables. Legends grew up which had for 





Centinela con ra Judios. 
1 Pierre de Lancre, loc. cit. 


— 168 — 


their starting point a metaphor, like the legend of the 
smell of the Jews. Fortunatus is the first to speak of it 
—for it seems probable that the passage from Am- 
mianus Marcellinus often referred to was misquoted,’ 
and he speaks of it in a figurative sense:* “The bap- 
tismal water removes the Jewish odor; the purified flock 
will exhale a new fragrancy.” Besides, the notion of 
fragrancy was associated with that of purity; to say 
of a blest man that he died in the fragrancy of sanctity 
really meant that this saint had the gift of emitting 
divine balms. When we read the lives of Saint Dom- 
inicus, of Anthony of Padua, of Francois de Paule, we 
see that they had enjoyed that privilege. On the con- 
trary, the vicious, the impious, all those whose soul was 
impure, would exhale an infected odor. Saint Phillip 
de Néri, so his biographer asserts, would distinguish the 
incontinent vices of men by the odor, and thus he would 
divine the presence of the devil; Dominique de Paradis 
and Gentille de Ravennes also possessed this faculty. 
As for the devil, everybody concurred in saying, during 
the Middle Ages, that he revealed his presence by a 
poisoned goat-smell. The Jew, who was the worst of 
the impious, and the true son of Satan, could not, ac- 
cordingly, help exhaling atrocious emanations. Strange 
to say, the Jews had similar notions of the relations be- 
tween sin and ill smell, and according to Maimonides, 

*Ammianus Marcellinus, B. XXII. It is certain that the 
Judaeorum foetentium of which Marcus Aurelius complained, 
comes from a blunder or the spite of the copyist, and that foe- 
tentium—ill-smelling—was substituted for poetentiwm-turbulent, 


which the Ms. of Ammianus contained. 
1Fortunatus, Carmina, 1. V. 





— 169 — 


the Serpent had thrown its stench on the race of Eve, 
but the faithful Jews had been preserved. 

Thus can be explained some other anti-Jewish 
prejudices; but though it is evident that the likening of 
the Israelites to the evil spirit caused the he-goat figure 
and horns on their foreheads to be attributed them, still 
many of these beliefs remain inexplicable. They all 
arise, in part, from the fact that the retired life of the 
Jews, their venerable habit of keeping aloof, not to 
mingle with those surrounding them—ever served to 
excite excessively the popular imagination. Whenever 
individuals or groups of individuals willingly fenced 
themselves in or were fenced in, the same phenomenon 
occurred; people would forget the causes which had 
brought on this seclusion and the isolated would be en- 
dowed with passions, vices, and infirmities, deemed the 
more horrible, as these recluses were detested. The 
same thing happened with certain conventual associa- 
tions, with secret societies, with militant religious or- 
ders, with all groups, which in any way lived away from 
the masses, whether for mystical, national or political 
reasons,—it mattered little. The populace is naturally 
curious, more than that, it is strongly imaginative, in- 
clined to make up legends, to originate fables, and very 
naively at that, in a childish fashion. A word, a sen- 
tence, an association of ideas suffice; at the slightest in- 
dication it rears up dreams, invents stories, of which it 
is impossible to extricate the origin. Whatever is hid- 
den disquiets, troubles, preoccupies it. It seeks for 
the motives that make a class of people shelter them- 
selves in a collective solitude, and finding none, invents 


— 170 — 


them; at all events, though it may discover some real 
motives, it cannot help inventing imaginary ones. All 
those who belonged to what is known as the accursed 
races were made the subject of these fables and legends. 

With reference to the Cagots of the Pyrenees, the 
Gahets of Guienne, the Agotacs of the Lower Pyrenees, 
the Couax of Bretagne, the Oiseliers of the duchy of 
Bouillon, the Burrins of ]’Ain, the Capots, the Trangots, 
the Gesitans, the Coliberts,—the same assertions were 
made as of the Jew." They exhale, it was said, a stink- 
ing and infectious odor, they wither fruits by holding 
them in their hands, they are subject to the flux of blood, 
they have a caudal appendage, they emit blood from the 
navel on Holy Friday, they have dim eyes, they droop 
their heads, they cannot expectorate. With slight 
variations, these stories were repeated about the Arians, 
Manicheans, Cathari, Albigenses, Patarians, in general, 
of all heretics. 

As to the Templars, concerning whom so many similar 
abominations had been spread, they, above all others, can 
be likened unto the Jews. Like the latter, they were 
hated for their pride, their ostentation, their wealth in 
the midst of general misery, their eagerness for gain, 
their shameless use of means of acquisition, their making 
usurious contracts. They were hated because they ad- 
vanced money on chattels and fiefs on condition that 
these fiefs and chattels remained theirs in case of the 
borrower’s death ; because the Templars’ Order possessed 
a greater part of the French territory in the thirteenth 
century and formed a commonwealth within the state, 

‘Michel, Les Races maudites, Paris, 1847. 





— 171 — 


the Templars having and recognizing no master but 
God.1_ We see then that the same causes produce the 
same results, create the same animosities, give rise to the 
same beliefs. 


Were not the Templars said to “burn and roast the 
children they begat by young girls, and to sacrifice to 
and anoint their idols with the fat taken off” ;? were not 
the Cagots said to make use of Christian blood? Does 
not the charge of ritual murder weigh over the Jews as 
it had weighed over those wretches, the lepers, whom the 
Middle Ages treated as the Jew’s brethren, thus taking 
up again the assertions of Manetho, repeated by Chaere- 
mon, Lysimachus, Posidonius, Apollonius Molon and 
Apion, just as it had weighed over the sorcerers, who 
were also likened to the Jews? But we shall come back 
to this question when we speak of the modern anti- 
semites. 


_. What was the attitude of the Jews in the face of all 
these attacks and abuses which the theologians and po- 
lemists directed at them? They vigorously defended 
themselves. They opposed exegesis to exegesis ; they op- 
posed their logic to their opponents’ arguments; they an- 
swered insults and calumnies with calumnies and insults ; 
which is but normal, natural, inevitable, but all the same 
these insults fatally rebounded against them. If the anti- 
Jewish literature is enormous, the defensive literature 
of the Jews, as well as their anti-Christian literature— 





1 Lavocat, Proces des Freres de Vordre du Temple, Paris, 1888. 
*Lavocat, loc. cit. 


— WW — 


for the Jews oftentimes took up the offensive—is quite 
considerable.* 

The first controversial work belonging to the Israelite 
literature of the Middle Ages, was the Book of the Lord’s 
Wars, written in 1170, by Jacob ben Ruben.? It was 
made up of twelve chapters, or gateways, proving that 
Messiah had not yet come, which, however, for the exe- 
getic rhetoricians, was just as easy as, if not easier than to 
prove the opposite. But it was not enough to prove that 
Jesus was not the awaited Messiah; it was equally nec- 
essary to prove the superiority of the Jewish religion to 
those who were establishing, irrefutably, the superiority 
of the Christian religion, and this was easy for both 
sides, as each drew from the Bible what suited it. The 
Talmudists made use of the New Testament even to con- 
firm their Judaic dogmas. This was done by Moses 
Tohen de Tordesillas, in his Support of the Faith, while 
Shem-Tob ben Isaac Shaprut resumed, in the form of a 
dialogue between a Unitarian and a Trinitarian, the 
ideas propounded by Jacob ben Ruben. 

The polemic literature was greatly developed in Spain 








+It would be necessary to devote a whole chapter to the anti- 
Christian literature, which I cannot possibly do here, where 
anti-Judaism is the main question, and I shall simply indicate 
the Jewish reaction. The Jewish endeavor against ‘Christian 
idolatry” was great indeed. To get some idea of it, it will suf- 
fice to glance over the Bibliotheca Judaica antichristiana of J. 
B. Rossi (Parma, 1800). Besides; the catalogue compiled by 
Rossi is not perfectly exact; still it enables one to gauge the 
polemic activity of the Jews, which finds its equal only in that 
of the Christians (Cf. also Wolf and Wagenseil, loc. cit.) 

2 Loeb, Revue des Htudes Juives, v. XVIII 

1Shem-Tob ben Isaac Shaprut, Zhe Touchstone (Loeb, loc. 
cit.). 


— 173 — 


in the fifteenth century. The time was a hard one 
for the Jews of the Peninsula. The Church doubled its 
efforts to convert them; disputes, pamphlets, treatises 
increased in numbers. The Jews fought against prose- 
lytism resorting to it under the last extremity, and later 
on, at the moment of the final banishement, the greatest 
part of them chose exile without the hope of return, 
rather than conversion. While the monks sought in the 
Pentateuch and the Prophets arguments in support of 
the Christian symbols, the Jews endeavored to lay plain 
the differences which divide the two creeds, and were 
fighting Catholicism in order to confirm the faith in the 
soul of those who vacillated. Like Chasdai Crescas they 
studied their opponents’ theology. Thus armed, Jacob 
ibn Shem Tob wrote the Objections to the Christian Re- 
ligion,* Simon ben Zemach Duran published a Philo- 
sophical Examination of Judaism, a special chapter of 
which, entitled “Bow and Shield,” contained a critique 
of Christianity. 

In imitation of the ecclesiastical writers and inquis- 
itors, the rabbis wrote books for the use of those who 
were challenged in disputes. A kind of vade mecum, 
these books pointed out the vulnerable sides of the Chris- 
tian dogmas; and if, on the one hand, there were publi- 
cations like “Judaism Defeated with Its Own Weapons,” 
on the other hand were composed works like “Christian- 
ity Defeated with Its Own Arms,” 1. e., with those found 
in the New Testament. In anti-Christian literature the 
Gospels played the part of the Talmud in anti-Jewish 








7Cf. Graetz, v. IV. 


— 1%74 — 


literature. Beginning with the eleventh or twelfth cen- 
tury they were often assailed, and numerous discussions 
took place between rabbanites and theologians. These 
discussions were sometimes gathered in collections, where 
they were presented in a light favorable to Jewish dia- 
lectics. Presently these collections came to be used as 
manuals; among them were the ancient Nizzachon (Vic- 
tory) of Rabbi Mattathiah; the Nizzachén of Lipman 
de Miilhausen ; the one by Joseph Kimhi; the Strength- 
ening of the Faith, by Isaac Troki,? and the Book of 
Joseph the Zealot. Still this was not sufficient for the 
fervor of the Jews. Having prepared the minds for 
future debates, having assailed the Catholic doctrines, 
not in oratorical tournaments only, but in apologies as 
well, they wrote abusive pamphlets, like that famous 
Toldot Jesho, the life of the Galilean which goes back 
to the second or third century, and which Celsius possi- 
bly was acquainted with.2 This Toldot Jesho was pub- 
lished by Raymund Martin, Luther translated it into 
German; Wagenseil and the Dutchman Huldrich also 
published it. It contained the story of Pantherus the 
soldier and the legends representing Jesus as a magician. 
After defending the Bible and Monotheism the Jews 
turned upon those who were their most dangerous ene- 
mies—the converted. If they had refuted Raymund 





? Wagenseil in his 7'ela ignea Satanae (Altdorf, 1681), repro- 
duces all these treatises in print. 

1Zadoc Kahn, The Book of Joseph the Zealot (Revue des 
Etudes Juives,, vols. I and III). 

2 For the Toldot Jesho, cf. Tela ignea Satanae, Wagenseil, v. 
II, 5, 189, and B. de Rossi, Biblotheca Judaica antichristiana 
(Parma, 1800), p. 117. 


— 1% — 


Martin’? and Nicholas de Lyra*, they refuted with still 
greater energy Jerome de Santa Fé, the Santa Fé whom 
his former coreligionists called Megaddef, 1. e., blas- 
phemer. At Jerome they were incensed. Don Vidal 
ibn Labi, Isaac ben Nathan Kalonymos,® Solomon 
Duran,? several others, wrote to give the lie to the “cal- 
umniator.” The same was done by Isaac Pulgar against 
Alfonso of Valladolid,? by Joshua ben Joseph Lorqui 
and Profiat Duran.* The apostates of the Middle Ages 
were not treated perceptibly better than of yore, in the 
first century of the Christian era, when a curse that was 
to smite them was added to the daily prayers; from the 
tenth till the sixteenth or seventeenth century, they 
repeated against them what the Talmud said of the Min- 
cans, the ancient Judeo-Christians and the Ebionites. 
Of course, all these Jewish books were not accepted with- 
out protests ; they also called forth numerous refutations, 
which in turn gave rise to replies. . 

In the seventeenth century anti-Judaism took on an- 
other form. The theologians were succeeded by erudites, 
scholars, exegetes. Anti-Judaism became milder and 
more scientific; it was represented by hebraizers, often 
of great attainments, like Wagenseil,* Bartolocci,® Voe- 





* Wagenseil, loc. cit. 

5 Magna Biblothica Rabbinica (Rome, 1693-95). 

* Solomon ben Adret, of Barcelona, refuted the Pugio Fidei. 

*Chayimibn Musa refuted Nicholas de Lyra in his Shield 
and Sword (Graetz, loc. cit.) 

* Letter of Combat (Graetz, loc. cit., and Rossi, Bibloth. anti- 
christ, (p. 100). 

? Dialogue against the Apostates (Loeb, loc. cit.) 

5 Alteca Boteca (Loeb, loc. cit.) —De Rossi, Dizionario degli 
autori Ebrei (Parma, 1802), p. 89. 


— 1% — 


tius,® Joseph de Voisin,’ ete. These men studied Jewish 
literature and manners in a more serious way. Thus 
Wagenseil denied ritual murder;' though saying that 
the Talmud contained “blasphemies, impostures and 
absurdities,’ Buxtorf declared that it also contained 
things of value for the historian and philosopher.? Yet 
the same ideas persisted which had inspired the authors 
of the preceding centuries. The object was always to 
prove the truth of the Christian faith and dogmas on 
the basis of the Old Testament; the anxiety to convert 
the Jews ever haunted the souls, the recall of Israel was 
spoken of, means of bringing them back were proposed ;? 
the apostates invoked the Zohar and Mishna in favor of 
Jesus,* and the polemic literature was still in bloom 
under Eisenmenger, whose Judaism Unveiled® has in- 
spired many contemporary antisemites; under Schudt,® 
later under Voltaire. It is true that literary anti-Juda- 
ism, particularly that of combative tendencies and pam- 





° Disputationes Selectae (Utrecht, 1663). 

™Theologia Judaeorum (1647). 

1 Benachrichtung wegen einiger die Judenschaft angehenden 
Sachen (Altdorf, 1709). 

? Dictionn, chaldeo-talmudico-rabbinique (Basiliae, 16389) and 
Synagoga Judaica (Hanau, 1604). 

® Pean de la Croullardiere, Methode facile pour convaincre les 
heretiques (Paris, 1667), which contains a “method of assailing 
ad converting the Jews’’; Thomas Bell’ Hader, Dottrina facile 
e breve per reduire Vv Hebreo al conoscimento del vero Messia e 
Salvator del Mondo (Venetia 1608). 

*Conrad Otton, Gali Razia (Secrets unveiled), (Nurenberg, 
1605). - ne 

5 Judaism Unveiled (Frankfort, 1700). 

®° Compendium Historiae Judaicae (Frankfort, 1700) and Ju- 
daeus Christicida gravissime peccans et vapulans (1760). 


— 1% — 


phleteers, is varied but little. Most of the anti-Jewish 
writers imitate one another, without scruple; they pla- 
giarize without even taking the trouble to verify the as- 
sertions of their predecessors. One book of the kind is 
responsible for similar others: Alonzo da Spina draws 
his inspiration from Batallas de Dios, by Alfonso of 
Valladolid; Porchet Salvaticus, Pietro Galatini, Pierre 
de Barcelona republish, under different names, Raymund 
Martin’s Sword of the Faith; Paul Fagius and Sebastian 
Miinster’ help themselves to the Book of the Faith. 

In spite of this, and independently of the dissimilar- 
ities I have noted, anti-Judaism, from the seventeenth 
century on, is in all respects quite different from the 
anti-Judaism of the preceding centuries. The social side 
gets gradually the upperhand of the religious side, 
though this latter continues to exist. The question is 
asked, not whether the Jews are wrong in being usurers, 
or merchants, or deicides, but whether, as Schudt? says, 
the Jews ought to be tolerated in a State or not, whether 
it is lawful to admit Jews into a Christian common- 
wealth, as John Dury® inquires, about 1655, in a pam- 
phlet directed against Cromwell’s protégé, Menasseh ben 
Israel. This is the social standpoint which we shall see 
developing henceforth in literary anti-Judaism; a part 
of modern antisemitism will rest on the theory of a 
Christian State and its integrity, and in this wise it will 
be connected with the ancient anti-Judaism. In the 
course of this book we shall have to examine more closely 





* Revue des Etudes juives, v. V, p 57. 
? Loe. cit. 
5A Case of Conscience (London, 1655). 


— 178 — 


the affinities and differences which unite and veparate 
these two kinds of anti-Judaism. 


CHAPTER VIII. 
MODERN LEGAL ANTI-JUDAISM. 


Emancipated Judaism.—The Position of the Jews in 
Society.—Usury and the Affairs in Alsace-—Napo- 
leon and the Administrative Organization of the 
Jewish Religion The Great Sanhedrin.—The Re- 
strictive Laws and the Progressive Liberation in 
France.—The Emancipation in the Netherlands.— 
Emancipation in Italy and Germany.—The Anti- 
Napoleonic Reaction and the Jews.—The Revival of 
Anti-Jewish Legislation—Popular Movements.— 
Emancipation in England.—In Austria.—The Rev- 
olution of 1848 and the Jews.—The End of Legal 
Anti-Judaism in the West.—Eastern Anti-Judaism. 
—The Jews in Roumania.—The Russian Jews.— 
The Persecutions.—The Social Question and the 
Religious Question. 


After preliminary discussions, as a result of which 
any decision on the emancipation of the Jews was ad- 
journed, the Constituent Assembly voted, on September 
27, 1791, on a motion by Duport, and thanks to Regnault 
de Saint-Jean-d’Angély’s intervention, the admission of 
the Jews to the rank of citizens, This decree had been 


— 179 — 


ready for a long time, prepared as it was through the 
work of the commission assembled by Louis XVI, with 
Malesherbes in the chair; prepared by the writings of 
Lessing and Dohm, of Mirabeau and Grégoire. It was 
the logical outcome of the efforts made for some time by 
the Jews and the philosophers; in Germany Mendels- 
sohn had been its promoter and most active advocate, 
and in Berlin Mirabeau drew his inspiration at the side 
of Dohm in the salons of Henriette de Lemos. 

A certain class of Jews had, however, already been 
emancipated. In Germany the court Jews (Hofjuden) 
had obtained commercial privileges ; even titles of nobil- 
ity were being conferred upon them for money. In 
France the Portuguese Marranos returned to Judaism, 
enjoyed great liberties and prospered under the super- 
vision of their syndics at Bordeaux, very indifferent 
nevertheless to the fate of their unfortunate brethren, 
though very influential: one of them, Gradis, failed to 
secure a nomination as deputy to the States-General. In 
Alsace even, several Jews obtained important favors, as, 
e. g., Cerf Berr, purveyor to the armies of Louis XV, 
who granted him naturalization and the title of Marquis 
de Tombelaine. 

Thanks to all these privileges, there sprang into exist- 
ence a class of rich Jews which came into contact with 
the christian society; open-minded, subtle, intelligent, 
refined, of extreme intellectualism, it had given up, like 
so many Christians, the letter of religion or of the faith 
even, and retained nothing but a mystic idealism which, 
for good or ill, went hand in hand with a liberal ration- 
alism. The fusion between this group of Jews and the 


— 180 — 


elite led by Lessing, was brought about above all in Ber- 
lin, a young city and centre of a kingdom which was 
rising to fame, an easy-going city, with little tradition. 
Young Germany gathered at the houses of Henrietta de 
Lemos and Rachel von Varnhagen; with the Jews, Ger- 
man Romanticism ended in impregnating itself with 
Spinozaism; Schleiermacher and Humboldt were seen 
visiting there, and it may be said that if the Constituent 
Assembly decreed the emancipation of the Jews, it was 
in Germany that it had been prepared. 

At any rate, the number of these Jews qualified to 
mingle with the nations, was extremely limited, the more 
so because the majority of them—like Mendelsson’s 
daughters, like Boerne and Heine later on—ended by 
converting, and thus no longer existed as Israelites. As 
for the mass of Jews, it was in quite different circum- 
stances. 

The decree of 1791 freed these pariahs from. a secular 
servitude; it broke the fetters with which the laws had 
bound fhe ; it wrested them from all kinds of ghettos 
where they had been imprisoned ; from, as it were, cattle 
it made them human beings. But if it was within its 
power to restore them to liberty, if it was possible for it 
to undo within one day the legislative work of centuries, 
it could not annul their moral effect, and it was espec- 
ially impotent to break the chains which the Jews had 
forged themselves. The Jews were emancipated legally, 
but not so morally; they kept their manners, customs 
and prejudices—prejudices which their fellow citizens 
of other confessions kept, too. They were happy at hav- 
ing escaped their humiliation, but they looked around 


— 181 — 


with diffidence and suspected even their liberators. 

For centuries they had looked with disgust and terror 
at this world which was rejecting them; they had suf- 
fered from it, but they still more feared to lose their 
personality and faith from contact with it. More than 
one old Jew must have looked with anxiety at the new 
existence which opened before him; I should not even be 
surprised if there were some in whose eyes the liberation 
appeared a misfortune or abomination. Many of these 
miserable beings cherished their humiliation, their seclu- 
‘sion which kept them far from sin and contamination, 
and the efforts of the majority were bent on remaining 
what they were, among strangers in whose midst they 
were cast. The enlightened, intelligent part of the 
Jews, the reformers, who suffered from their inferior 
position and from the degradation of their coreligionists 
—these worked for emancipation, but even they could 
not at once transform those. for whom they had re- 
claimed the right of being human creatures. 

As the decree of emancipation did not change the 
Judaic self, the way in which this self manifested itself 
was not changed either. Economically the Jews re- 
mained what they were—be it understood that I speak 
of the majority—unproductive, 7. e., brokers, money- 
lenders, usurers, and they could not be otherwise, given 
their habits and conditions under which they had lived. 
With the exception of an insignificant minority among 
them, they had no other aptitudes, and even nowadays a 
great many Jews are in the same plight. They did not 
fail to apply these aptitudes, and during this period of 
unrest and disorder they found occasion to apply them 


— 18 — 


more than ever. In France they availed themselves of 
events, and the events were favorable for them. In 
Alsace, for instance, they acted as auxiliaries to the 
peasants, whom they lent the funds necessary for the 
purchase of national property. Already before the revo- 
lution they were the home-bred usurers in this province, 
and the objects of hatred and contempt ;* after the Revo- 
lution, the very peasants who had erstwhile forged quit- 
tances? to escape from the clutches of their creditors, 
now appealed to them. Thanks to the Alsatian Jews, the 
new ownership continued, but they meant to draw profit 
from it with a plentiful, usurious hand. The debtors 
raised a protest ; they pretended they would be ruined if 
no aid were forthcoming, and in this they exaggerated, 
as they, who previous to 1795 had nothing, had eighteen 
years later acquired 60,000,000 francs’ worth of estates 
on which they owed the Jews 9,500,000 franes. Never- 
theless, Napoleon lent ear to them, and suspended, dur- 
ing one year, judicial decisions in behalf of the Jewish 
usurers of the Upper Rhine, the Lower Rhine, and the 
Rhine provinces. His work did not stop at that. In 
the preambles of the decree of suspension of May 30, 
1806, he showed that he did not consider the repressive 





1 Mention must be made that, as in the Middle ages, the Alsa- 
tian Jews were the “dummies” and intermediaries of the Chris- 
tian usurers, (Cf. Halphen, Recueil des lois et decrets concer- 
nant les Israelites, (Paris, 1851), and the Petition des Juifs 
etablis en France addressee a VAssemblee nationale le 28 janvier 
1790). 

2On the Alsatian Jews before and after the Revolution, con- 
sult: Gregoire, Hssai sur la Regeneration des Juifs; Dohm, De 
la Reforme politique des Juifs; Paul Fauchille, La Question 
Juive en France Sous le premier Empire (Paris, 1884). 


— 183 — 


measures sufficient, but wanted the source of the evil 
done away with. 

“These circumstances,” said he, “caused us at the 
same time to consider how urgent it was to revive among 
those subjects of our country who profess the Jewish 
religion, the sentiments of civic morals, which have un- 
fortunately been deadened with a great number of them 
through the state of humiliation in which they have 
languished too long, and which is not our intention to 
maintain and renew.” 

To revive or rather to give birth to these sentiments, 
he wanted to bend the Jewish religion to suit his dis- 
cipline, to hierarchize it as he had hierarchized the rest 
of the nation, to make it conform to the general plan. 
When first consul he had neglected to take up the ques- 
tion of the Jewish religion, and so he wanted to make 
amends for this failure by convoking an Assembly of 
Notable Jews for the purpose of “considering the means 
of improving the condition of the Jewish nation and 
spreading the taste for the useful arts and professions 
among its members,” and of organizing Judaism admin- 
istratively. A list of questions was sent out among 
prominent Jews and when the answers had come in, the 
Emperor called together a Great Sanhedrin vested with 
the power of bestowing a religious authority upon the 
responses of the first assembly. The Sanhedrin declared 
that the Mosaic law contained obligatory religious pro- 
visions, and political provisions; the latter concerned 
the! people of- Israel when an autonomous nation, and 
had, therefore, lost their meaning since the Jews had 
scattered among the nations; it also forbade to make, 


— 184 — 


in the future, any distinctions between Jews and Chris- 
tians in the matter of loans, and entirely prohibited 
usury. 

These declarations showed that the prominent Jews 
belonging for the most part to the minority I have 
mentioned, knew to adapt themselves to the new state 
of affairs, but could in no way make any presumption 
upon the dispositions of the mass. Therein Napoleon 
deceived himself; his fondness for order, regulation and 
law, his faith in their efficiency played him false. He 
doubtless imagined that a Sanhedrin was a council, but 
it was nothing of the kind. The Sanhedrin decisions 
had absolutely no import except as personal opinions, 
they were in no way binding upon the Jews, they car- 
ried no authority, and there were no sanctions to en- 
force them. The only piece of work of this assembly was 
administrative—that of organizing consistories; as for 
the moral work it was naught, and the men assembled 
were incapable of changing manners. They knew it too 
well themselves, however, and they simply recorded what 
was common property; thus they abolished polygamy 
which had been out of use for centuries. It required the 
candor of Napoleon the legist to believe that a synod 
could enjoin love for the neighbor, or forbid usury 
which the social conditions facilitated. The imperial 
prohibition for Jews against providing substitutes for 
military service—this for the purpose of making them 
better realize the grandeur of their civic duties—was 
bound to have the same: effect as the prescriptions of 
the synod.1_ The case was the same with the decree of 

* Halphen, Recueil des lois et decrets. 





— 18 — 


March 17, 1808, forbidding the Jews to engage in com- 
merce without a personal license issued by the prefect, 
or to take mortgages without authorization; besides, 
Jews were forbidden to settle in Alsace and the Rhine 
provinces, and the Alsacian Jews were forbidden to enter 
other departments unless to engage in agriculture,’ 
These decrees issued for ten years, did not turn one Jew 
into an agriculturer, and if any of them became chauvin- 
ists, the obligation of serving in the army had something 
to do with it. These were the last restrictive laws in 
France; the legal assimilation was consummated in 
1830, when Lafitte had the Jewish creed incorporated in 
the budget. This meant the final downfall of the “Chris- 
tian State,” though the lay state was not, as yet, com- 
pletely established. The last trace of the ancient distinc- 
tions between Jews and Christians disappeared with the 
abolition of the oath More Judaico, in 1839. Nor was 
the moral assimilation complete. 

So far we have been speaking of the emancipation of 
the French Jews, it remains to examine the influence 
it had on the Jews of Europe.t' From the moment of the 








? Halphen, loc. cit. 


1In this book I shall not speak of the modern Jews of the 
Mohammedan countries, Turkey, Asia_Minor, Tripoli, Persia. 
It is quite evident that the enmity there rests on quite different 
causes from those in Christian lands, and quite different princi- 
ples, or at least notions and instincts, guide the Mohammedans. 
In the contemporary meaning of the word, antisemitism does not 
exist in any of these countries, nevertheless the hostility to Jews, 
especially popular hositility, is very great there. To determine 
the causes thereof it would require a special study, which I 
shall undertake later on; in this study I shall take up the Tun- 
isian and Algerian Jews, with the understanding that I shall not 


— 186 — 


foundation of the Batavian Republic, in 1796, the Na- 
tional Assembly gave the Jews in the Netherlands the 
rights of citizenship, and their position regulated later 
by Louis Bonaparte was settled in a decisive way by 
William I, in 1815. As a matter of fact, the Dutch 
Jews enjoyed important privileges and quite a deal of 
liberty since the sixteenth century: the Revolution was 
but the decisive cause of their total liberation. In Italy 
and Germany emancipation was brought to the Jews by 
the armies of the Republic and the Empire. Napoleon 
became the hero and god of Israel, the awaited liberator, 
he whose mighty hand was breaking the barriers of the 
Ghetto. He entered all cities greeted by the acclamations 
of the Jews—witness the way in which Heinrich Heine 
extolled him—who felt that their cause was linked with 
the triumph of the eagles. And for this reason the Jews 
were the first to feel the effects of the Napoleonic reac- 
tion. A return to anti-Judaism went hand in hand with 
the exaltation of patriotism. The emancipation was a 
French act; it was, therefore, necessary to prove it bad, 
besides, it was a revolutionary act, and there was a re- 
action against the Revolution and the ideas of equality. 
While the Christian State was being re-established, the 
Jews were being banished. In Germany in particular 
this antique religious conception of the State again came 
to life with a new splendor, and in Germany, especially, 





deal with the grievances of the French antisemites against them, 
grievances similar to those which we are about to treat here, 
although some of them, as, for instance, the national grievance, 
are hardly tenable. I shall simply deal with the more interest- 
ing aspects and the causes of hatred between Arabs and Jews, 


— 187 — 


anti-Judaism manifested itself more acutely, but the re- 
vival of anti-Jewish legislation was general. In Italy 
legislation had been resumed in 1770; in Germany the 
Vienna Congress abolished all imperial provisions for 
Jews, leaving them only the rights granted by the lawful 
German governments. As a result of the decisions of: 
the Congress, the cities and communities showed them- 
selves harsh toward the Jews. Lubeck and Bremen ex- 
pelled them ; like Rome, Frankfort shut them up anew in 
their ancient quarters.1_ Naturally, popular movements 
followed suit of the legal measures. At this moment of 
overheated patriotism, any restriction of the rights of 
strangers met with approval; for the Jews were as ever 
the strangers par excellence, who best represented nox- 
ious strangers, and so, about 1820, 7. e., the moment 
when this state of minds reached its paroxysm, the mob 
fell, in many places, upon the Jews and badly maltreated 
them, even if it did not massacre thém. 


The thirty years following the disappearance of Na- 
poleon did not witness any great progress for the Jews. 
In England where they were, as a matter of fact, 
treated liberally enough, they were, nevertheless, al- 
ways considered dissidents, and, like the Catholics, were 
subject to certain obligations. Little by little only did 
they see their condition modified, and the history of 
their emancipation is an episode in the struggle between 
the House of Commons and the House of the Lords. 








7 At this moment the Jews entered suit against the city of 
Frankfort to contest the legality of the city’s decisions. This 
suit was the occasion of violent anti-Jewish polemics. 


— 188 — 


Not before 1860 were they completely assimilated with 
the other English citizens. 

In Austria they had been partly emancipated by the 
Toleration edict of Joseph II. (1785), but had to un- 
dergo the same reaction; the Revolution was too fatal 
- for the Austrian House, that the latter should even put 
up with this well-nigh equality of the Jews which a 
democratic and philosophic sovereign had granted. 
Only in 1848 the Austrian Jews became citizens.t At 
the same time their emancipation was achieved in Ger- 
many,” Greece, Sweden, and Denmark. Once more they 
owed their independence to the revolutionary spirit which 
once again came from France. However, we shall see 
that they were not strangers to the great movement 





+The constitution of March 4, 1849, proclaimed the equality 
before the law. But as this constitution was abolished in 1851, 
an ordinance of July 29, 1853, restored the old legislation against 
the Jews. Successive Amendments were added to it, and the 
Constitution of 1867 finally restored equality before the law and 
liberated the Jews. 

In Hungary the law emancipating the Jews was also voted 
in 1867 by the Chamber of Deputies, on motion by the Govern- 
ment. (Cf. Wolf, Geschichte der Juden in Wien, Vienna, 1876; 
Kaim, Hin Jahrhundert der Judenemancipation. Leipzig, 1869.) 

2'The German Constituent Assembly voted the equality of all 
citizens before the law, on May 20, 1848. The Parliament of 
Frankfort did likewise, and the principle of this equality was 
incorporated in the German constitution of 1849. At any rate 
many States retained the restrictions against the Jews till the 
‘time of the Law of the Northern Federation of July 3, 1869, 
which abolished all the “restrictions of civil and political rights 
that still existed and were based on difference in religion.” (Cf. 
Kain, loc. cit. and Allegemeine Zeitung des Judenthums for the 
years 1887, 1849, 1856, 1867, 1869). After the Franco-German 
which had not adopted it before the organization of the Empire. 
war, this law was forced upon those States like Bavaria, e. g., 


— 189 — 


which agitated all Europe; in some countries, notably 
in Germany, they aided in preparing it, and they were 
the advocates of liberty. They also were among the first 
to benefit thereby, as legal anti-Judaism may be said 
to have come to an end in the Occident after 1848. Lit- 
tle by little the last obstacles fell, and the last restric- 
tions were abolished. The fall of the temporal power 
of the Popes, in 1870, did away with the last occidental . 
Ghetto, and the Jews now could become citizens even in 
St. Peter’s city. 

Since then anti-Judaism has transformed, it has be- 
come purely literary, it has come to be but an opinion, 
and this opinion has no longer had its effect on laws. 
But before examining this antisemitism of the pen 
which in certain countries existed until 1870, side by 
side with restrictive regulations, we must speak of the 
Christian States of Eastern Europe, where the anti- 
Judaism is even now legal and persecutionary, 1. e., of 
Roumania and Russia. 

The Jews have lived in Roumania,! 1. e., the Moldau- 
Valachian lands, since the fourteenth century, but they 
came there in numbers at the beginning of this century 
only, and are about 300,000 in all, as a result of Hun- 
garian and Russian emigration. For many long years 
they lived undisturbed. They naturally depended upon 
the boyars who hold the power in this country, and they 
leased the sale of spirits from these noblemen, who held 
the monopoly therefor. As they were indispensable to 





Desjardins, Les Juifs de Moldavies (Paris, 1867).—lIsidore 
Loeb, La Situation des Israelites en Turquie, en Serbie et en 
Roumanie (Paris, 1877). 


— 190 — 


the noblemen as tax-collectors, fiscal agents and all sorts 
of middlemen, the nobles were rather inclined to grant 
them privileges, and they only had the excess of popular 
superstitions or passions. The official persecutions of 
the Jews began only in 1856, when Roumania adopted 
the representative system and the power thus fell into 
the hands of the bourgeois class. The Paris treaty of 
1858, which preceded the union of Moldavia and Val- 
achia, bestowed the enjoyment of civil rights upon the 
Moldau-Valachians without distinction of creed. De- 
spite the formal text of the treaty, the Jews were denied 
the benefits of naturalization, and replying to represen- 
tation made to it the Roumanian government asserted 
that the Jews were aliens. Thenceforth restrictive 
* measures grew more serious. The Jews could not obtain 
any rank, they were deprived of the right of permanent 
domicile in country places, they were forbidden to hold 
real estate—except in cities—or lands, or vineyards. 
They were prohibited to take estates on lease, to keep 
hotels and taverns outside of cities, to retail spirits, to 
have Christian domestics, to build new synagogues. 
Some of these decisions were passed arbitrarily by cer- 
tain municipalities; in other villages, on the contrary, 
the Jews were tolerated. This state of affairs lasted till 
1867. At this time the minister Jean Bratiano pub- 
lished a circular in which he recalled to mind the fact 
that the Jews had no right to live in rural communities, 
or to take there property on lease. As a result of this 
circular the Jews were expelled from the villages they 
inhabited, they were condemned like vagabonds, and the 
expulsions continued till 1877; they were generally 


— 191 — 


called forth by the uprisings in Bucharest, Yassy, 
Galatz, Tecucin, as well as in other places, and during 
these uprisings cemeteries were profaned and synagogues 
burned. 

What were, what are still the causes of this special 
legislation, and of this animosity of the Roumanians 
towards the Jews? They are not exclusively religious, . 
and despite the persistence of ancestral prejudices, it 
is not a case of a confessional war. The Roumanian 
Jews constituted, especially at the moment of the for- 
mation of Roumania, agglomerations completely isolated 
from the bulk of the population in the Moldau-Val- 
achian lands. They wore a special garb, lived in quar- 
ters set apart in order to escape contaminations, and 
spoke a Judaeo-German jargon, which rounded off their 
marks of distinction. They lived under the domination 
of their rabbis, narrow-minded, limited, ignorant Tal- 
mudists, from whom they received in Jewish schools— 
heder—and education which was conducive to their in- 
tellectual abasement and their degradation. 

They were the victims of this isolation which was due 
to their guides, the rabbinists. The patriotic passions 
were particularly aroused in this land, which was being 
born, was acquiring a nationality and striving for unity. 
There has been a pan-Roumanism, just like pan-Ger- 
manism or pan-Slavism. There were discussions on the 





* This condition has not changed since, and only a small num- 
ber of Jews, by entering universities and obtaining there intel- 
lectual development, succeeded in tearing themselves away from 
the exclusionist prejudices of the mass which is still sunk in the 
stupor, from which antitalmudic instruction alone can recover it. 


— 192 — 


Roumanian race, on its integrity, its purity, the danger 
threatening it from adulteration. Associations were 
formed to counteract foreign encroachment, and Jewish 
encroachment in particular. Schoolmasters, university 
professors were the soul of these societies; just as in 
Germany, they were the most active antisemites. They 
looked upon the Jews as agents and apostles of Ger- 
manism, and they became the instigators of restrictive 
legislation in order to repel and restrain them. They 
reproached the Jews with forming a state within a 
state, which was true, but—and that is the everlasting 
inconsistency of anti-Judaism—they passed laws to re- 
tain them in the condition they considered dangerous. 
They asserted that the Jewish education crippled the 
brains of those receiving it, that it rendered them unfit 
for social life, which was but too correct, and yet they 
were going to shut the Jews out completely from obtain- 
ing the education given to Christians, exactly the one 
that would lift them from their degradation. 

But the college-bred were not the sole anti- 
semites in Roumania, and there were economic causes 
beside patriotic causes. As I have said, antisemitism 
was born with the advent of the bourgeoisie, because this 
bourgeois class, composed of merchants and manufac- 
turers, came into competition with the Jews who dis- 
played their activity exclusively in commerce and in- 
dustry, when not in usury. The bourgeoisie had every 
interest in the passage of protective laws, which, though 
nominally directed at strangers and not at the Jews, 
principally aimed at placing obstacles to the expansion 
of their formidable rivals. It achieved its point by 


— 193 — 


skilfully fomenting disturbances.which gave their rep- 
resentatives in Parliament a chance to propose new 
regulations. Thus these diverse causes of antisemitism 
may be reduced to a single one—national protection- 
ism—and very clever it is, as simultaneously with deny- 
ing the Jews all civic rights on the ground that they are 
strangers, it forces them into military service, which 
again is a contradiction, as none but a citizen can form 
a part of a national army. 

Harder still, more miserable than in Roumania, is 
the condition of the Jews in Russia. Their history in that 
country, where they arrived in the third century B. C. 
and founded colonies in Crimea, has been that of the 
Jews of all Europe. They were banished in the twelfth 
century never to be recalled. Nevertheless, at present 
Russia counts 4,500,000 Jews (see footnote), and to say, 
as the antisemites maintain, that the Jews have invaded 
it is nonsense, for Russia has acquired them by seizing 
White Russia in 1769 and late on the Polish provinces 
and Crimea, which contained a great number of Jews. At 
the moment of this conquest it was out of the question 
to apply the ukase of 1742 which banished the Jews 
once more. On the one hand, it was not an easy thing 
to drive out several million individuals into the neigh- 
boring states; on the other, commerce, industry, 
and particularly the treasury, would have fared ill from 
such wholesale expulsion. Catherine II. then granted 
the Jews equal rights with her Russian subjects, but the . 








1I believe the truth of this will be admitted by the most irra- 
tional chauvinist, be he a Turk, Bulgarian, Russian, German, 
Englishman or even a Frenchman. 


— 194 — 


Senate ukases of 1786, 1791 and 1794 curtailed these 
privileges and confined the Israelites within White Rus- 
sia and Crimea—thenceforth constituting the Jewish 
territory—and Poland. Only in certain cases and under 
special conditions were they allowed to leave the limits 
of this territorial Ghetto. 

‘In Russia all modern antisemitism, which is official 
antisemitism par excellence, consists in keeping the 
Jews from escaping the Senate ukases just spoken of. 
Russia has resigned herself to her Jews, but she wants to 
leave them where she found them. Still there were 
favorable or rather less unfavorable times for the 
Jews. Alexander J. permitted them in 1808 to 
settle in the crown lands on condition of engaging there 
in agriculture; Nicholas I. gave them permission to 
travel when their business required it, they were allowed 
to attend the universities ; and under Alexander II. their 
position improved still further.* 

After the death of Alexander II. the autocratic re- 
action became monstrous in Russia: an abominable re- 
awakening of absolutism was the answer to the bomb of 





*N. de Gradovski, La Situation legale des Israelites en Russie 
(Paris, 1891).—Tikhomirov, La Russie politique et sociale 
(Paris, 1888).—Les Juifs de Russie (Paris, 1891).—Prince 
Demidoff-San-Donato, La question juive en Russie (Bruxelles, 
1884).—Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu, L’Empire des Tzars et les 
Russes (Paris, 1881-82-89). [English translation, London and 
New York, 1894].—Weber et Kempster, La Situation des Juifs 
en Russie (Resume of a report to the United States Government 
by its delegates).—Leo Errera, Les juifs Russes (Bruxelles, 
1893).—Harold Frederic, The New Exodus (1892). 


— 19 — 


the nihilists. The national orthodox spirit was overex- 
cited, the liberal and revolutionary movement was 
charged to foreign influences, and the Jews were made 
the scapegoats, in order to divert the people from the 
nihilistic propaganda; hence the massacres of 1881 and 
1882, during which the mob burned Jewish houses, 
robbed and killed the Jews, saying: “Our daddy, the 
Tsar, wants it.” 

After these disturbances General Ignatyeff promul- 
gated the “May Laws” of 1882. They read as follows: 

1. As a temporary measure and until the general 
revision of the laws regulating their status, Jews are for- 
bidden to settle hereafter outside of cities and towns. 
Exception is made with regard to Jewish villages already 
in existence where the Jews are engaged in agriculture. 

2. Until further order all contracts for the mortgaging 
or renting of real estate situated outside of cities and 
towns to a Jew, shall be of no effect. Equally void is. 
any power of attorney granted to a Jew for the adminis- 
tration or disposition of property of the above-indicated 
nature. 

3. Jews are forbidden to do business on Sundays and 
Christian holidays; the laws compelling Christians to 
close their places of business on those days will be ap- 
plied to Jewish places of business. 

4. The above measures are applicable only in the 
governments situated within the Jewish pale of settle- 
ment. 

These laws were enacted as a temporary measure. Ac- 
cordingly, a commission presided over by Count Pahlen 
met in 1883 to settle finally the Jewish question. The 


— 196 — 


conclusions of this commission were quite liberal in 
spirit ; it recommended that certain civil rights be given 
to the Jews. Owing to the influence of Pobyedonostseff, 
the Procurator of the Holy Synod, the report of the 
Pahlen Commission was buried, and the May Laws have 
remained in force. Since that time, and especially from 
1890 on, the persecutions redoubled. The “pale” was 
narrowed by forbidding the Jews to enter certain forti- 
fied places, and by creating a frontier belt where the 
Jews could not reside. The ukase of 1865 of Alex- 
ander II., allowing “skilled” artisans to choose a do- 
micile throughout the empire was abrogated. Thus 
nearly 3,000,000 Jews were crowded into the cities of 
the pale of settlement, while a million was spread over 
Poland, and 500,000 privileged—merchants of the first 
rank, financiers and students—all over Russia. 

In the cities of the pale of settlement the Jews con- 
stitute a majority, and the conditions of their exist- 
ence are frightful. Crowded in unhealthy habitations, 
where they live in the worst of poverty, ravaged by mis- 
ery beside which the misery found in Paris, Berlin and 
London is prosperity; with “slack-time” during a part 
of the year, with work during the other part on con- 
dition of accepting wages so ridiculously low that 
their scale often falls to 8 or 10 cents a day; multiplying 
incessantly because of their very destitution, these 
wretches are in the slow agonies of death and are the 
foreordained victims of cholera, typhoid fever and all 
pests. From day to day their condition grows more . 
serious, their distress increases, they are crowded to- 
gether in the cities like cattle, without hope of deliver- 


— 197 — 


ance in sight; they have only the choice of three things ; 
conversion, emigration or death. It is just what the 
Procurator of the Holy Synod, Pobyedonostseff foresaw, 
when he demanded the application of the Ignatyeff Laws. 

Other measures, besides this systematic crowding, 
were taken against the Jews. They were shut out of 
certain occupations and certain professions; those shel- 
tered in hospitals as invalids were sent away; employees 
of railroads and steamship companies were dismissed ; 
the number of those who could enter universi- 
ties, colleges and high schools was limited; they 
were barred from becoming attorneys, physicians, 
engineers, or at least their opportunties for en- 
tering these professions were restricted; even their 
own schools were closed to them, they are not 
admittd even to hospitals, they are burdened with special 
taxes on their rents, inheritances, the animals they kill 
for meat, the candles they light on Friday evenings, the 
skull-caps they wear during religious ceremonies, even 
when these are of a private nature. 

Besides these official taxes imposed by the government, 
the Jews are under the exploitation of the Russian ad- 
ministration and police, the basest, the most corrupt and 
venal in all Europe. Half the income of the middle 
class Jews, says Weber and Kempster, and Harold Fred- 
eric, goes to the police. Every Jew in easy circum- 
stances is the victim of constant extortion. As for those 
(and they are the majority), who are too poor to be 
able to pay, they are subjected to the most loathsome, 
most inhuman treatment, forced to bow to all the whims 

* Loc. cit. 





— 198 — 


of brutal policemen who domineer and martyrize them, 
as they martyrize also the nihilists and the suspects of 
liberalism whom the horrible autocracy of the Tsar 
places in their power.? 

Why this treatment, this abominable persecution? 
Because, say the antisemites, these four and a half mil- 
lion Jews exploit the ninety million Russians. How do 
they exploit them? By usuary. Still nine-tenths of the 
Russian Jews own nothing, there are hardly ten to 
fifteen thousand Jews in Russia who possess capital. 
Of these ten to fifteen thousand some are merchants, 
others are money lenders and probably usurers; finally, 
an insignificant minority who have from time immem- 
orial lived in villages, lend money to the peasants. True, 
these few were driven from the villages, but the mer- 
chants, financiers, and all those in general, who are rich 
and can pay for the privileges, were left quite undis- 
turbed. If, therefore, the exploiters were aimed at, a 
mistake was made, because the artisans and poor 
wretches were chiefly hit by it. Has at least the condi- 
tion of the peasants improved? No. The Russian peas- 
ant, burdened with taxes since the time of his emanci- 
pation, exploited by the fise and the officers of the gov- 
ernment agents, is the fated prey of usurers. The Jew’s 
place was everywhere taken by the kulak* (a peasant 





? The condition of the Jews in Russia, compared with that of 
the native people, is absolutely the same as in the Middle Ages. 
The Russian peasant and the workingman are pretty nearly as 
wretched as the Jew. They, too, are subjected to annoyances 
and arbitrary rule, but they are not persecuted, and have, 
to a certain degree the right of migrating. 

* Russ. kulak, literally fist. 


— 199 — 


usurer), who, even previously had been playing havoc 
in all Russian villages where there were no Jews—i. e., 
in the majority of the country districts. But no meas- 
ures were taken against the kulak. Thus, the expulsion 
of the Jews has not for its object the protection of the 
peasants. They also turn people to drunkenness, we are 
asssured. But Katkoff, who could not be suspected of ~ 
bias in favor of the Jews, said more than once that al- 
coholism is much more widespread in central and north- 
ern Russia, where there are no Jews, than in the South- 
west, where they are engaged in inn-keeping. It is quite 
natural: alcohol, which becomes a necessity to the 
wretches whose nourishment is insufficient; is still more 
necessary in the cold countries. Though the Jews may 
not be saloon-keepers and others may replace them, yet 
the expulsion of the Jews is not a fight against alcohol- 
ism, as no measure has been taken against the Christian 
retailers who outnumber the Jewish retailers. 

We shall not deal with the frauds with which Jewish 
business men are charged, as exactly these business men 
occupy a privileged position ; as for the lawlessness of a 
part of the miserable mass, those of whom it is made up 
“would not have food if they did not rob,”* and so they 
are in the same position with a great number of orthodox 
Russians whom the social and economic condition of 
Russia forces to resort to unscrupulous methods, in order 
to make a living.? 








7A great part of these grievances is better founded with ref- 
erence to the Jews of Poland, and yet the Jews there are not 
driven back into cities as are those of the “pale of settlement.” 
* Tikhomirov, loc. cit, 


Be SOO ks 


What are then the real causes of antisemitism? They 
are political and religious. Antisemitism is by no means 
a popular movement in Russia; it is purely official. The 
Russian people, laden with misery, crushed under taxes, 
groaning under the most atrocious of tyrannies, embit- 
tered by administrative violence and governmental abuse 
of power, burdened with suffering and humiliation 
is in an unberable condition. Generally resigned, they 
are liable to yield to passions; their uprisings and revolts 
are formidable; antisemitic riots are the proper thing 
to divert popular anger, and that is why the govern- 
ment encouraged them and often provoked them. As 
to the peasants and workingmen, they fell upon the 
Jews because, they said, “the Jew and the nobleman 
are of a pair, only it is easy to thrash the Jew.*’ Thus 
is explained the plundering of rich Jewish merchants, 
of wealthy money-lenders, often of poor Jewish work- 
men, and it is heart-rending to see these disinherited fall 
upon one another instead of uniting against the op- 
pressive tsarism. 

The possibility of a union between these two camps 
of misery is, perhaps, foreseen by those whose interest 
it is to engender and keep their antagonism and who 
actually saw the rioters burn many Christian houses 
during the riots of 1881 and 1882. After Alexander 
TI.’s death it became urgent to blot out of the moujiks’ 
and proletarians’ memories the nihilists’ attempts at 
liberation. The revolution was more than ever the 
frightful hydra and dragon, against which Holy Russ 





1 Tikhomirov, loc. cit. 


— 201 — 


was to be protected. To accomplish it a return to ortho- 
dox ideas was thought necessary. All evil, it was said, 
comes from the foreign, the heretical, that which pollutes 
the sacred soil. It was the theory of Ignatyeff, of Pobyed- 
onostseff, and of the Holy Synod, and doubtless of the 
unhappy Alexander III., whom fear drove insane, and 
whom Polyedonostseff guided like a weak-minded child. 
A rush was made against the Jews, just as measures 
were taken against Germans, Catholics, Lutherans, 
against all those who were not of the Slavic race and 
did not belong to the Greek orthodox church.* At all 
events, the persecution of the Jews was more active, for 
with regard to them no attention had to be paid to dip- 
lomatic discretion with which they came into a clash in 
the case of the Catholics, Lutherans or Germans. Had 
the Russian Catholics been massacred, all Europe would 
have arisen; the Jews could be killed with impunity. 
However, just like the Roumanian Jews, the Jews of 
Russia are distinguished from the rest of the population 
by their manners, customs and education—excepting 
an enlightened very intelligent minority of young Jews, 
who rushed into the universities before their doors 
were closed on them. They have an internal organiza- 
tion—the Kahal, which gives them a sort of self-govern- 
ment, and to denounce them as dangerous is easier, as 
well as of great benefit to established institutions and 





* One of the queerest things is the approval given by certain 
religious antisemites of France and Germany—through chauv- 
inism or passion—to the actions of the Tsar’s government. In 
approving the Tsar’s persecution against the Jews, they im- 
Plicitly approve those against the Catholics and Lutherans, 
who are so dear to them. 


See oe | 


the orthodox capitalists who thus escape the popular 
passions whose explosion is ever to be feared. 

The religious origin of the official antisemitism has 
often been denied ; yet it cannot be denied, and the Rus- 
sians will yet probably give up even Panslavism in | 
order to arrive at religious unity, a unity which to some 
of them, at least, seems indispensable for the unity of 
the State. The national and the religious question are but 
one in Russia, the Tsar being simultaneously the tem- 
poral and spiritual head, Caesar and Pope; but to faith 
more importance is attached than to race, and the proof 
is that a Jew who is willing to be converted is not perse- 
cuted. On the contrary, the Jew is encouraged to em- 
brace orthodoxy. From fourteen years of age on, any 
Jewish child may be baptized against the will of his 
parents; a convert when married is free from the ties 
which unite him with his wife or children, a woman con- 
vert cancels her matrimonial ties by the very process of 
her conversion, but the non-converted consorts are always 
treated as married. Finally, when baptizing, adult con- 
verts receive from fifteen to thirty rubles, and children 
from seven to fifteen rubles. To induce the Jews still 
further to embrace the Greek faith, the rabbinical schools 
were suppressed ; the number of synagogues was limited— 
the Moscow synagogue was closed up in 1892 as “an in- 
decent thing ;’—-Jews are even forbidden to gather for 
prayer. What then becomes of the antisemites’ com- 
plaints against the Jews if they admit into their midst 
converted Jews, knowing as they do perfectly well 
that baptism would not make those who are not artisans, 


— 203 — 


but middlemen and capitalists' change their positive 
function in the community.. 


Thus we may say that in eastern Hurope where the 
actual condition of the Jews fairly well represents 
what had been their condition in the Middle Ages, the 
causes of antisemitism are twofold: social causes, and 
religious causes combined with patriotic ones. It now 
remains for us to see what are the causes that maintain 
antisemitism in the countries where it has become anti- 
semitism of the pen instead of legal antisemitism, and, 
first of all, to examine this transformation and the phen- 
omena to which it has given rise. 





*I could but sketch the general outlines of Roumanian 
and- Russian antisemitism. Tio make a complete story of them 
would require more than these few pages, within which it was 
impossible to give a social picture of Roumania and Russia, and 
to expound the moral, psychological, ethnological and economic 
position of the Jews in these countries. 


— 204 — 


CHAPTER IX. 
MODERN ANTISEMITISM AND ITS LITERATURE. 


The Emancipated Jew and the Nations.—The Jews and 
the Economic Revolution—The Bourgeoisie and 
‘the Jews.—The Transformation of Anti-Judaism. 
—Anti-Judaism and Antisemitism.—Instinctive 
-Anti-Judaism and Antisemitism of the Reason.— 
Legal Anti-Judaism and Antisemitism ot the Pen. 
—Classification of the Antisemitic Literature.— 
Christian Antisemitism and the Anti-Judaism of 
the Middle Ages.—Anti-Talmudism.—Gougenot de 
Mousseaux,, Chiarini, Rohling.—Christian-Socialist 
Antisemitism.—Barruel, Eckert, Don Deschamps.— 
Chabeauty——Edouard Drumont and the Pastor 
Stoecker.—Economic Antisemitism.—Fourier and 
Proudhon; Toussenel, Capefigue, Otto Glaguu.— 
Ethnological and National Antisemitism.—Hegel- 
ianism and the Race Idea.—W. Marr, Treitschke, 
Schoenerer.—Metaphysical Antisemitism.—Scho- 
penhauer.—Hegel and the Hegelian Extreme Left. 
—Max Stirner.—Diihring, Nietzsche and Anti- 
Christian Antisemitism.—Revolutionary Antisem- 
itism.—Gustave Tridon.—The Complaints of the 
Antisemites, and the Causes of Antisemitism. 


The emancipated Jews scattered among the nations 
just like strangers, and, as we have seen, it could not be 


— 205 — 


otherwise, since for centuries they formed a nation 
among the nations, a special people preserving its char- 
acteristics thanks to the strict and precise ritual, as well 
as owing to the legislation which kept it apart and tend- 
ed to perpetuate it. As conquerors, not as guests did 
they come into modern societies. They were like a 
penned-in flock; suddenly the barriers fell and they 
rushed upon the field opened to them. They were not 
warriors, what is more, the moment was not favorable 
to an expedition of a small band, but they made the only 
conquest for which they were armed, the economic con- 
quest for which they had been preparing for so many 
long years. They were a race of merchants and money- 
dealers, perhaps degraded by mercantile practice, but, 
thanks to this very practice, equipped with qualities 
which were becoming preponderant in the new economic 
system. And so it was easy for them to take to com- 
merce and finances, and, it must be repeated, they could 
not act otherwise. Crowded together, oppressed for cen- 
turies, ever curbed in their soarings, they had acquired 
a formidable power of expansion, and this power could 
find application in certain channels only; their efforts 
were limited, but their nature was not changed, and it 
was not changed on the day of their liberation either, 
and they marched ahead on the road which was familiar 
to them. However, the state of affairs was particularly 
favorable to them. At this period of great overthrows 
and reconstructions, when nations were being modified, 
new principles established, new social, moral and meta- 
physical conceptions wrought out, they were the only 
ones to be free. They were without any attachments to 


— R06 — 


those surrounding them; they had no ancient patrimony 
to defend, the heritage which the former society was 
leaving to nascent society was not theirs; the thousand 
ancestral ties which linked the citizens of the modern 
state with the past, could not influence their conduct, 
their intellectuality, their morality; their spirit had no 
shackles. 

I have shown that their liberation could not change 
them, that a number of them regretted their past of 
isolation, and even if they did endeavor to remain them- 
selves, if they did not assimilate, they marvelously 
adapted themselves, by the very force of their special 
tendencies, to the economic conditions which had af- 
fected the nations since the beginning of the nineteenth 
century. 

The French Revolution was above all an economic 
revolution. If it is considered as the termination of a 
struggle between classes, it must be viewed as the con- 
summation of a struggle between two forms of capital, 
viz.: real property and personal property, or landed cap- 
ital, and industrial and speculative capital. With the 
supremacy of the nobility the supremacy of landed 
capital disappeared, too, and the supremacy of the bour- 
geoisie brought on the supremacy of industrial and 
speculative capital. The emancipation of the Jew is 
linked with the growth of the prevalence of industrial 
capital. So long as landed capital retained the political 
power, the Jew was deprived of any right; the Jew was 
liberated on the day when political power passed t» in- 
dustrial capital, and that proved fatal. The bourgesisie 
needed help in the struggle it undertook; the Jew was 


— R207 — 


for it a valuable ally, whom it was its interest to eman- 
cipate. Since the days of the Revolution, Jew and bour- 
geois marched hand in hand, together they sustained 
Napoleon at the moment when dictatorship became nec- 
essary to defend the privileges gained by the Third 
Estate, and when the imperial tyranny became too heavy 
and oppressive for capitalism the bourgeois and the Jew, 
united and preluded the fall of the Empire by fore- — 
stalling provisions at the time of the Russian campaign 
and helped to bring about the final disaster by calling 
forth slumps at the exchange and buying the disloyalty 
of marshals. 


At the beginning of the great industrial development, 
after 1815, when canal, mine, and insurance com- 
panies were formed, the Jews were among the most ac- 
tive in promoting combination of capital. Moreover, they 
were the most skilful, because the spirit of combination 
had for centuries been their only support. But they 
were not content to aid in bringing about in this prac- 
tical way the triumph of industrialism, they gave their 
aid in a theoretical way, also. They gathered around 
Saint-Simon, the philosopher of the bourgeoisie; 
they worked at diffusing and developing his teaching. 
Saint-Simon had said:1 “The manufacturers must 
be entrusted with the administration of the temporal 
power,” and “the last step that remains for industry to 
make is to obtain the direction of the State and the chief 
problem of our time is to secure to industry a majority 





*Saint-Simon, Du Systeme industriel (Paris, 1821). 


— 208 — 


in our parliaments.” He had added:? “The industrial 
class must occupy the first rank, because it is the most 
important of all; because it can do without all the others, 
while none other can do without it; because it exists by 
its own forces, by its personal labors. The other classes 
must work for it, because they are its creatures and be- 
cause it sustains their existence; in a word, as everything 
is made by industry, everything must be made for it.” 
The Jews helped to realize the Saint-Simonian 
dream; they proved themselves the most trustworthy 
allies of the bourgeoisie, inasmuch as in working for it 
they worked for themselves and, in all Europe, they 
were in the front rank of the liberal movement, which 
from 1815 till 1848 succeeded in establishing the dom- 
ination of bourgeois capitalism. 

This role of the Jews did not escape the class of 
landed capitalists, and we shall see that therein lay one 
of the causes of the anti-Judaism of the conservatives, 
but to the Jews it was not worth so much as the recog- 
nition of the bourgeoisie. When the latter had firmly 
established its power, when it became restful and secure, 
it discovered that its ally, the Jew, was its formidable 
competitor, and it reacted against it. Thus the conser- 
vative parties, made up, as a rule, of capitalist agricul- 
turers, became anti-Jewish in their fight against indus- 
trial and speculative capitalism, represented chiefly 
by the Jew, and industrial and speculative capitalism 
became anti-Jewish in its turn, on account of Jewish 
competition. Anti-Judaism, which had been religious 


2 Saint-Simon, Catechisme des Industriels, ler Cahier (Paris, 
1823). 





— 29 — 


at first, became economic, or, rather, the religious causes, 
which had once been dominant in anti-Judaism, were 
subordinated to economic and social causes. 

This transformation, which corresponded with the 
change in the role played by the Jews, was not the only 
one. Once a matter of sentiment, the hostility towards 
the Jews became one of reason. The Christians of yes- 
terday hated the deicides instinctively, and they never 
attempted to justify their animosity: they showed it. 
The antisemites of to-day conceived a desire to explain 
their hatred, 1. e., they wanted to dignify it: anti- 
Judaism moulted into antisemitism. How was this anti- 
semitism manifested? It had no other way of expression 
but ,through the printing press. Official anti- 
semitism was dead in the West, or it was 
dying; as a result anti-Jewish legislation, too, was dis- 
appearing; there remained theoretical antisemitism, it 
was an opinion, a theory, but the antimesites had a very 
distinct object in view. Up to the time of the Revolu- 
tion literary anti-Judaism sustained legal anti-Juda- 
ism, since the Revolution and the emancipation of 
the Jews, literary antisemitism has striven to restore 
legal anti-Judaism in the countries where it no longer 
exists. It has not, as yet, achieved that, and we have to 
study only the manifestations of the antisemitism of the 
pen, manifestations, some of which represent the opin- 
ion of the many, for, if literary antisemites have sup- 
plied reasons to the unconscious antisemites, they were 
produced hy them; they attempted to explain what the 
flock felt, manifested, and if they have at times as- 
cribed strange and improbable motives, they often but 


— R210 — 


echoed the sentiments of their inspirers. What were 
these sentiments? We shall see if we examine the anti- 
semitic literature, and at the same time we shall disen- 
tangle the manifold causes of contemporary antisemit- 
ism. 
_ Except in the case of some of them, it is impossible 
to classify the antisemitic works under too narrow cate- 
gories, as each of them often presented manifold tend- 
encies. Still they each have a dominant idea, in accord- 
ance with which their classification may be settled, al- 
ways remembering that a work approaching a definite 
type does not belong solely and exclusively to it. We 
shall, then, subdivide antisemitism into Christian, So- 
cialist, economic, ethnological and national, metaphy- 
sical, revolutionary and anti-Christian antisemitism. 
Christian Socialist antisemitism was generated by the 
permanency of religious prejudices. If the Jews had not 
changed on entering into society, the sentiments felt 
toward them for so many long years would not have 
disappeared either. The Jews owed their emancipation 
to a philosophical movement coinciding with an eco- 
nomic movement and not to the abolition of secular 
prejudices against them. Those who thought the Chris- 
tion State the only State possible looked with disfavor 
upon the intrusion of the Jews, and anti-Talmudism 
was the first manifestation of this hostility. The Tal- 
mud which was justly considered the religious strong- 
hold of the Jews was assailed and a host of polemists 
devoted themselves to proving how much the teachings 
of the Talmud were opposed to the teachings of the 
Gospel. Against the book they resumed all the com- 


— 211 — 


plaints of the controversialists of yore, those enumerated 
by the Jewish apostates in debates, and repeated in the 
thirteenth century by Raymund Martin, those raised by 
Pfefferkorn and later on by Eisenmenger. Not even the 
method or the make-up was changed; the same moulds 
were made use of; in writing pamphlets the same tra- 
ditions were followed as those of the dominican in- 
quisitors, and not a whit more of critical acumen was 
put to use in the study of the Talmudic “deep.” Never- 
theless, concerning the Jew, his dogmas, his race, the 
Christian antisemites of our time have the same notions 
as the Jews of the Middle Ages had. The Jew preoccu- 
pies and haunts them, they see him everywhere, they trace 
everything back to him, they have the same conception of 
history as had Bossuet. For the bishop, Juduea was 
the centre of the world; all events, disasters and joys, 
conquests and the downfalls, as well as the foundings 
of empires had for its primary, mysterious and ineffable 
cause the whims of a God faithful to the Bene-Israel, 
and this people, wanderer, founder of kingdoms and 
captive, in turn, had continually directed mankind 
toward its only goal: the coming of Christ. Ben Hadad 
and Sennacherib, Cyrus and Alexander, seem to exist 
only because Judah exists, and because Judah must now 
be exalted and then humiliated, until the hour when he 
will enjoin upon the world the law which must come 
from him. But what Bossuet had conceived for the pur- 
pose of unheard of glorification, the Christian antisem- 
ites renew that with quite opposite ends in view. For; 
them the Jewish race, the scourge of the nations, scat- 
tered over the earth, accounts for the misfortunes and 


— 212 — 


blessings of the alien nations in whose midst it had 
settled, and the history of the Hebrews once more be- 
comes the history of monarchies and_ republics. 
Scourged or tolerated, banished or admitted, they, by 
the very fact of these political vicissitudes, account for 
the glory of the states or even their decadence. To tell 
the story of Israel, is to tell the story of France, or Ger- 
many, or Spain. This is what the Christian antisemites 
see, and their antisemitism is thus purely theological, it 
is the antisemitism of the Fathers, that of Chrysostom, 
Saint Augustin, Saint Jerome. Before the birth of 
Jesus, the Jewish people was the chosen people, the 
beloved son of God; since the time it had disowned the 
Saviour, since it had become a deicide, it had become 
the fallen people par excellence, and having before 
brought the world’s salvation, it now causes its ruin. 

In certain works, as, e. g., in the little known book by 
Gougenot des Mousseaux, The Jew, Judaism and the 
Judaization of the Christian Nations,’ this conception 
is very clearly set forth. To Gougenot the Jews are 
“for ever the elect nation, the noblest and most august 
of nations, the nation issued from the blood of Abraham, 
to which we owe the mother of God.” At the same time 
the Jews are the most perverse and unsociable of beings. 
’ How does he reconcile these contradictions? By oppos- 
ing the Mosaic Jew to the Talmudist, the Bible to the 
Talmud. This is the way in which most of the Chris- 
tian antisemites proceed. “Judaism and not Mosaism 
stands in the way of a radical reformation of the Jews,” 





1Gougenot des Mousseaux, Le Juif, le Judaisme et la Judai- 
sation des peuples chretiens (Paris, 1869). 


— 213 — 


says the abbot Chiarini in a memoir composed as “a 
guide to reformers of the Jews.’ 

Whatever their affinities and kinship with the anti- 
Jews of the Middle Ages, the anti-Talmudists, at all 
events, take a little different point of view. Formerly, 
the blasphemies against the Christian religion were 
- chiefly sought in the Talmud, or arguments in support 
of the divinity of Jesus Christ were sought there; here- 
after this book’s enemies hunt it especially as an anti- 
social, pernicious and destructive work. The Talmud, 
according to them, makes the.Jew an enemy of all na- 
tions, but if some of them, like des Mousseaux and 
Chiarini are guided, like the theologians of yore, above 
all by the desire to bring Israel back to the bosom of 
the church,? others, like Doctor Rohling,? are rather in- 
clined to suppress him and they declare him forever in- 
capable to be of any good. Quite the contrary; since, 
they say, not only are his teachings incompatible with 
the principles of Christian governments, but because 
he even seeks to ruin these governments in order to draw 
profit therefrom. 

It is easy to understand that after the upsettings 
caused by the French Revolution, the conservatives felt \ 

‘*?Chiarini, Theorie du Judaisme (Paris, 1830). 

*The anxiety for the future role of the Jews is expressed in 
a striking book by Leon Bloy, Le Salut par les Juifs (Paris, 
1892). In the volume of documents and notes written as a 
sequel to Dom Deschamps’ work on Secret SOcteties, Claudio Jan 
net expresses the opinion that the Jews are undoubtedly destined 
to lead the world back to God. This is exactly the ancient theo- 
logical belief. 


* Eng. translation. A. Rohling, Le Juif selon le Talmud 
(Paris, 1888). Translated from the German. 





— 214 — 


called upon to hold the Jews responsible for the destruc- 
tion of the ancient regime. When they cast a glance 
around them after the storm had passed away, one of 
the things that must have given them the greatest sur- 
prise, was surely the position of the Jew. But yesterday 
the Jew was nothing, he had no right, no power, and now 
he was shining in the front rank; not only was he rich, 
but he could even be doctor and govern the land, as he 
paid his tax. Him particularly did the social change 
favor. In the eyes of a representative of the past, of 
tradition, it looked as if a throne had been overthrown 
and European wars let loose solely in order_that the Jew 
might acquire the citizen’s rank, and the declaration of 
the Rights of Man seemed to have been but a declaration 
of the rights of the Jew. Accordingly, the Christian 
antisemites did not stop at being incensed at the Jews’ 
speculations over national property or the military sup- 
ply, but applied to them the old juridical saying: 
fecistt qui prodes (“thou hast done it who profittest 
thereby.”’) If the Jew indeed had profited by the Revolu- 
tion in this respect, if he had derived from it so great 
a benefit, it means that he had prepared them, or rather, 
to say, he had helped along with all his forces. 
Nevertheless it was necessary to explain how this 
despised and hated Jew, considered a thing, had obtained 
the power of accomplishing such deeds, how he had pre- 
pared so formidable a might. Here comes in a theory, 
or rather a philosophy of history familiar to the Cath- 





1I do not mean to say that the Jews were the only ones to 
speculate in this way; on the contrary, they were in the insignif- 
icant minority among those who did the speculation. 


— 215 — 


olic polemists. According to these historians, the 
French Revolution whose counter blow has been univer- 
sal, and which has transformed the institutions of 
Western Europe, was but the capping of a secular con- 
spiracy. Those who attribute it to the philosophical 
- movement of the eighteenth century, to the excesses of 
monarchical governments, to a fatal economic change,| 
to the decrepitude of a class, the enfeeblement of a form, 
of capital, to the inevitable evolution of the ideas of au-' 
thority and State, to the enlargement of the idea of an, 
individual—all those are grievously in error, according 
to the historians I am speaking about. They are blind 
people who do not see the truth: the Revolution was the 
work of one or several sects, whose establishment goes 
back to great antiquity, sects brought out by the same 
desire and the same principle: the desire for domina- 
tion and the principle of destruction. These sects pro- 
ceeded according to a clearly defined, inexorably fol- 
lowed up plan—toward the destruction of monarchy and 
church; through their countless ramifications they cov- 
ered Europe with a string of close meshes, and, with 
the help of the most underhand, abominable means, they 
succeeded in undermining the throne—the only up- 
holder of social and religious order. 

_ The Genesis of this conception of history is easy to 
find. It took its origin under the Terror itself. The 
part taken by the Masonic lodges, by the Illumines, the 
Red-Crosses, the Martinists, etc., in the Revolution, had 
vividly struck certain minds which were carried away 
to exaggerate the influence and role of these societies. 
A thing which particularly astonished these superficial 


— 216 — 


observers, was the international character of the Revo- 
lution of 1789 and the simultaneousness of the move- 
ments it called forth. They contrasted its general ef- 
fect with the local effect of the previous Revolutions, 
which had agitated, as, e. g., in England, only the coun- 
tries where they took place, and, in order to account 
for this difference they attributed the work of centuries 
to a European association with representatives in the 
midst of all nations, rather than to admit that the same 
stage of civilization and similar intellectual, social, 
moral and economic causes, could have simultaneously 
produced the same effects. The very members of these 
lodges, of these societies, helped in spreading this be- 
lief. They, too, exaggerated their importance, they not 
only asserted to have worked, during the eighteenth cen- 
tury, for the changes then in the process of preparation 
—which was true—but they even claimed to have been 
their distant initiators. This, however, is not the place 
to debate this question ; suffice it to have stated the ex- 
istence of these theories: we are going to show how they - 
came to the assistance of the Christian antisemites. 

The first writers to set forth these ideas confined 
themselves to stating the existence of “a peculiar nation 
which was born and had grown in darkness, amidst all 
civilized nations, for the purpose of subjecting all of 
them to its rule,” as, e. g., the cavalier de Malet, brother 





1Louis Blanc, Histoire de la Revolution Francaise, vol. II, 
p. 74. 

1 Recherches historiques et politiques qui prouvent Vexistence 
dune secte revolutionnaire, son antique origine, son organisa- 
tion, ses moyens ainsi que son but; et devoilent entierement 


— 21% — 


of the conspiring general, wanted to prove in a book, lit- 
tle-known and very poor at that. Men like P. Barruel, 
in his Memoirs on Jacobinism,* like Eckert in his works 
on Free Masonry,’ like Dom Deschamps,‘ like Claudio 
Jannet, like Crétineau Joly,® have developed and sys- 
tematized this theory, they have even endeavored to 
prove its reality and though they did not attain their 
aim, they have at least gathered all the elements neces- 
sary to undertake so curious a history as that of secret 
societies. In all their works, they were led to examine 
what had been the position of the Jews in these groups 
and sects, and, struck by the analogies presented by the 
mystagogic rites of Masonry as compared with certain 
Judaic and Kabbalistic traditions, misled by the He- 


Vunique cause de la Revolution Francaise, par le Chevalier de 
Malet. Paris, Gide fils, libraire, 1817. 

2? Barruel, Memoires sur le Jacobinisme (1797-1813). Father 
Barruel was the first to expound these ideas, and those who 
followed him have, properly speaking, only imitated or continued 
his work. : 

> Kckert, La F'ranc-Maconnerie dans sa veritable signification ~ 
aye 1854).— La Franc-Maconnerie en ellememe (Liege, 
1859). 

“Dom Deschamps, Les Societes Secretes et la Societe, with an 
introduction, notes and documents by Claudio Jannet. Paris, 
1883. 

* Cretineau Joly, L’Hnglise romaine avant la Revolution. Paris 
1863. 

On the Hebrew traditions in Free-Masonry, and on the points 
of similarity between the Free-Masons and the ancient Essenians, 
cf. Clavel, Histoire pittoresque de la Franc-Maconnerie (Paris, 
1843) ; Kauffmann et Cherpin, Histoire philosophique de la 
Franc-Maconnerie (Lyons, 1856) and an article by Moise 
Schwab on the Jews and the Free-Masons, published in the An- 
nuaire des Archives israelites pour Van 5620 (1889-1890). 
Consult also the various works of J. M. Ragou on Free-Masonry 
(Paris, Dentu). 








— 218 — 


brew pomp which characterizes the initiation in these 
lodges, they arrived at the conclusion that the Jews had 
always been the inspirers, guides and masters of Free- 
Masonry, nay, more than that, they had been its found- 
ers, and that they, with its aid, persistently aimed at 
the destruction of the church, from the very time of its 
foundation. 

They went further in this path, they wanted to prove 
that the Jews had preserved their national constitution, 
that they were still ruled by princes, the Nassi, who led 
them to the conquest of the world, and that these enemies 
of mankind possessed a formidable organization and 
tactics. Gougenot des Mousseaux,? Rupert, de Saint- 
André,* the abbot Chabeauty,® have supported these as- 
sertions. As for Edouard Drumont, the whole pseudo- 
historic portion of his books, when not borrowed from 
father Loriquet, is nothing but a clumsy and uncritical 
plagiarism of Barruel, Gougenot, of Dom Deschamps 
‘ and Crétineau Joly. 

Whatever the case may be, with Drumont, as with 
pastor Stoecker, Christian antisemitism transforms or 


7 Gougenot des Mousseaux, loc. cit. 

* Rupert, L’Eglise et la Synagogue (Paris, 1859). 

*De Saint-Andre, Francs Macons et Juifs (Paris, 1880). 

°A Chabeauty, Les Juifs nos Maitres (Paris, 1883). 

1Tt must be noted that in his France Juive (1 mean in its first 
chapters) Drumont does not quote Gougenot des Mousseau or 
Barruel even once; he quotes, in passing, Dom Deschamps three 
times and Cretineau de Joly’s Vendee Militaire once, and yet he 
laid these writers under heavy contribution. Unless his “his- 
torical documents” had been furnished him by the disciples of 
those I have just mentioned—that is quite possible. Let it be 
understood here, that this refers to Drumont as historian and 
not as polemist. 





-— 219 — 


rather it borrows new weapons from several sociologists. 
TThough Drumont fights the Jew’s anti-clericalism, 
though Stoecker, in his anxiety to win the name of a 
second Luther, rises against the Jewish religion as 
destructive of the Christian State, other preoccupations 
engage them; they attack Jewish wealth and attribute 
to Jews the economic transformation which is the work 
of the 19th century. They still persecute in the Jew, the 
enemy of Jesus, the murderer of a God, but they aim 
particularly at the financier, and therein they join hands 
with those who preach economic antisemitism. 


This antisemitism has manifested itself since the be- 
ginning of Jewish financiering and industrialism. If we 
find only traces of it in Fourier? and Proudhon, who 
confined themselves to stating only the role of the Jew 
as middle-man, stock-jobber and non-producer,’ 
it gave life to men like Toussehel? and Capefigue ;* it 
inspired such books as The Jews Kings of the Epoch 
and the History of Great Financial Operations; and 
later on, in Germany, the pamphlets of Otto Glagau 





Fourier, Le Nouveau Monde industriel et societaire (Paris, 
librairie societaire, 1848). 


*In Karl Marx (Annales franco-allemandes, 1844, p. 211) 
and in Lassalle, the same estimates of the parasite Jew may be 
found as in Fourier and Proudhon. 


? Toussenel, Les Juifs rois de V Epoque (Paris, 1847). Tous- 
senel followed up this book with a violent campaign in the news- 
paper, La Democratie pacifique. However, the antisemitic 
movement vas quite violent, under the July monarchy, and nu- 
merous pamphlets were published against the Jewish financiers. 


® Capefigue, Histoire des grandes operations financieres (Paris, 
1855). 


— 220 — 


against the Jewish bankers and brokers.* However, I 
have already pointed out the origin of this antisemitism, 
how, on the one hand, the landed capitalists held the 
Jew accountable for the predominance of industrial and 
financial capitalism, so hateful to them, how, 
on the other hand, the bourgeoisie, stocked with 
privileges, turned against the Jew, its erstwhile ally, 
henceforth its competitor and a foreign competitor at 
that ; for to his position as a non-assimilated stranger the 
Jew owes the excessive animosity shown him, and thus 
economic antisemitism is bound up with ethnologic 
and national antisemitism. 

This Jast form of antisemitism is modern, it was born 
in Germany, and from the Germans the French antisem- 
ites have derived their theory. 

This doctrine of races, which Renan advocated in 
France’ was wrought out in Germany under the influ- 
ence of the Hegelian doctrines. It gained the ascend- 
ancy in 1840 and particularly in 1848, not only because 
German policy pressed it into service, but because it was 
in accord with the nationalist and patriotic movement 
that produced nations, and with that striving for unity 
which characterized all European nations. 

The state, so they said, must be national; the nation 





*Otto Glagau, Der Boersen und Grundergeschwindel in Ber- 
lin, (Leipzig, 1876). Les besoins de VEmpire et le nouveau 
Kulturkampf (Osnabruck, 1879). 

* During the last years of his life Renan had given up his 
theory of races, their inequality and their mutual superiority or 
inferiority. These theories will be found set forth quite clearly 
and lucidly in Gobineau’s in many ways remarkable book, L’in- 

egalite des races (Paris, Firmin Didot, 1884). 


=a 5 ae 


must be one, and must include all the individuals speak- 
ing the national language and belonging to the same 
race. More than that, it is of importance that this na- 
tional State reduce all the heterogeneous elements, 1. ¢., 
the foreigners. For the Jew, not being an Aryan, has 
not the same moral, social and intellectual conceptions 
as the Aryan; he is irreducible, and therefore he must 
be eliminated, or else he will ruin the nations that have 
received him, and some among the nationalist and ethno- ~ 
logic antisemites assert that the work has already been 
accomplished. 

These notions, resumed since then by von Treitschke? 
and Adolph Wagner in Germay, by Schoenerer in Aus- 
tria, Pattai in Hungary and, at a much later date, by 
Drumont in France*, were reduced, for the first time, 
to a system by W. Marr, in a.pamphlet which had a cer- . 
tain echo in France: The Victory of Judaism over Ger- 
manism.® In it Marr declared Germany the prey of a 
conquering race, the Jews, a race possessing everything 





*H. von Treitschke, Hin Wort ueber unser Judenthum (A 
Word about Our Jews). Berlin, 1888. 

*?Drumont is the type of the assimilator antisemite who has 
flourished in France these last years, and who has overrun Ger- 
many. A talented polemist, vigorous journalist and sprightly 
satirist, Drumont is a historian of poor documentary evidence, 
a mediocre sociologist and especially philosopher, and can under 
no circumstances be compared with men of H: von Treitschke’s, 
Adolph Wagner’s and Eugen Duhring’s standing. Yet, in the 
development of antisemitism in France and Germany even he 
has played a considerable role, and he has exercised a great in- 
fluence as a propagandist. 

*'W. Marr, Der Sieg des Judenthums ueber das Germvanthum 
(Berne, 1879). In the Journal des Debats of Nov. 5, 1879, 
Bourdeau devoted an essay to this pamphlet. 


— 222 — 


and wanting to judaize Germany, like France, however, 
and he concluded by saying that Germany was lost. 
To his ethnologic antisemitism he even admixed the met- 
aphysical antisemitism which, if I may say so, Schopen- 
hauer had professed,* the antisemitism consisting in 
combatting the optimism of the Jewish religion, an opti- 
mism which Schopenhauer found low and degrading, 
and with which he contrasted Greek and Hindoo relig- 
ious conceptions. 

But Schopenhauer and Marr are not the only repre- 
sentatives of philosophical antisemitism. The whole of 
German metaphysics combatted the Jewish spirit, which 
it considered essentially different from the Germanic 
spirit, and which for it stood for the past as contrasted 
with the present. While the Spirit is realized in the 
world’s history, while it advances, the Jews remain at a 
lower stage. Such is the Hegelian thought, that of 
Hegel and also of his disciples of the extreme left-- 
Feuerbach, Arnold Ruge and Bruno Bauer.’ Max Stir- 











*“A God like that Jehovah,’ says Schopenhauer, ‘who, as 
animi causa, for its own pleasure and from the joy of heart 
produces this world of misery and lamentations, and who even 
glories in it and applauds himself with his 
—this is too much. Let us then, at this point, consider the 
religion of the Jews as the last among the religious doctrines 
of the civilized nations, and this will be in perfect accord with 
the fact that it is the only one that has absolutely not a trace 
of immortality.” (Parerga und Paralipomena, v. II, ch. XII, 
p. 312, Leipzig 1874). 

* We shall return to this question in our Economic History of 
the Jews, when speaking of the role of the Jews in Germany in 
the nineteenth century.—Cf. Hegel, Philosophie des Rechts; 
Arnold Ruge, Zwei Jahre in Paris; Bruno Bauer, Die Juden- 
frage; L. Feuerbach, Das Wesen des Christenthums. 


— 223 — 


ner? developed these ideas with much precision. To 
his mind, universal history has until now passed through 
two ages: the first, represented by antiquity, during 
which we had to work out and eliminate “the negro stage 
of the soul ;” the second, that of Mongolism, represented 
by the Christian period. During the first age man de- 
pended upon things, during the second he is swayed by 
ideas, waiting until he can dominate them and free him- 
self. But the Jews, these precociously wise children of 
antiquity, have not passed out of this negro stage of the 
soul. In spite of all their sagacity and their intelligence, 
which, with little effort, masters things and makes them 
subserve man, they cannot discover the spirit which con- 
sists in holding things as not having happened. In 
Diihring we find another more ethical than metaphysical 
form of philosophical antisemtism. In several treatises, 
pamphlets and books,? Diihring assails the Semitic spirit 
and the Semitic conception of the divine and of ethics, 
which he contrasts with the conception of the Northern 
peoples. Pushing the deductions from his premises to 
their logical end and still following up Bruno Bauer’s 
doctrine, he assails Christianity which is the last mani- 
festation of the Semitic spirit: “Christianity,” says he, 
“has above all no practical morality such as is not capa- 
ble of ambiguous interpretation and thus might be avail- 
able and sane. The nations will, therefore, not be done 





*Max Stirner, Der Hinzige und sein Higenthum. Leipzig, 
1882, pp. 22, 25, 31, 69. 


1 Particularly in The Parties and the Jewish Question. Die 
Judenfrage als Frage der Racenschaedlichkeit. 


— R24 — 


with the Semitic spirit until they have expelled from 
their spirit this present second aspect of Hebraism.” 

After Diihring, Nietzsche,’ in his turn, combatted Jew- 
ish and Christian ethics, which, according to him, are 
the ethics of slaves as contrasted with the ethics of mas- 
ters. Through the prophets and Jesus, the Jews and the 
Christians have set up low and noxious conceptions 
which consist in the deification of the weak, the humble, 
the wretched, and sacrificing to it the strong, the proud, 
the mighty. 

Several revolutionary atheists, Gustave Tridon? and 
Regnard® among them, have espoused, in France, this 
Christian antisemitism which, in its final analysis, is 
reduced to the ethnologic antisemitism, just like as is the 
strictly metaphysical antisemitism. 

The different varieties of antisemitism may, then, be 
reduced to three: Christian antisemitism, economic 
antisemitism, and ethnologic antisemitism. In our ex- 
amination just made we have pointed out that the griev- 
ances of the antisemites were religious grievances, social 
grievances, ethnologic grievances, national grievances, 
intellectual and moral grievances. To the antisemite the 
Jew is an individual of a foreign race, incapable of 
adapting himself, hostile to Chmstian civilization and 
religion ; immoral, antisocial, of an intellectuality dif- 
ferent from the Aryan intellectuality, and, to cap it 
all, a depredator and wrongdoer. 





1¥Frierich Nietzche, Human, all too Human (1879), Beyond 
Good and Evil; The Genealogy of Morality (1887). 

? Gustave Tridon, Du Molochisme juif. (Bruxelles, 1884). 

5A. Regnard, Aryens et Semites. (Paris, 1890). 


— R25 — 


We shall now examine these grievances in regular 
order. We shall see whether they are well-founded 
t. e., Whether the real causes of contemporary antisemi- 
tism correspond to them, or they are but prejudices. Let 
us first turn to the study of the ethnologic grievance. 


CHAPTER X. 
THE RACE. 


The Ethnologic Grievance.—The Inequality of Races.— 
Semites and Aryans.—Aryan Superiority.—The 
Struggle of Semites and Aryans.—The Semitic 
Share in the so-called Aryan Civilizations —The 
Semitic Colonization—The First Years of the 
Christian Era and the Judeo-Christians.—The 
Jewish Elements in the European Nations.—The 
Idea of Race Among the Jews.—Jewish Superior- 
ity—The Origins of the Jewish Race.—Foreign 
Elements in the Jewish Race.—Jewish Prosely- 
tism.—In Pagan Antiquity.—After the Christian 
Era.—The Uralo-Altaic Infiltrations in the Jewish 
Race.—The Khazars and the Peoples of the Cau- 
casus.—Different Varieties of Jews.—Dolichoceph- 
als and Brachycephals.—Ashkenazim and Sephar- 
dim.—The Jews of China, India and Abyssinia.— 
Modification Through Surroundings and Language. 
Jewish Unity.—Nationality. 


— R26 — 


The Jew is a Semite, he belongs to a strange, noxious, 
disturbing and inferior race—such is the ethnologic 
grievance of the antisemites. What does it rest upon? 
It rests upon an anthropological theory which had given 
rise or at least justification to an historical theory: the 
doctrine of the inequality of races, of which we must 
speak first of all. 

Since the eighteenth century attempts have been made 
to classify men and distribute them under well-defined, 
distinct and separate categories. As a basis for it quite 
different indices were taken: the section of the hair— 
oval section for negroes with woolly hair, or round sec- 
tion ;1 the shape of the skull—broad or elongated ;? the 
color of the skin. This last classification has prevailed: 
nowadays three races of mankind—the negro, the yellow, 
and the white race—are distinguished. Different apti- 
tudes are ascribed to these races, and they are arranged 
in the order of their superiority in a ladder of which the 
negro race occupies the lowest and the white race the 
highest round. Similarly, in order to account still better 
for this hierarchy of the human races, the religious doc- 
trine of monogenism, which declares that mankind has 
descended from a single couple,—is rejected, and against 
it is set up polygenism which admits of the simultaneous 
appearance of numerous different couples,—a more log- 
ical and rational conception and more in keeping with 
reality. 

Has this classification any serious and actual bases? 
Does the belief in monogenism or in polygenism allow of 





1 Ulotrichi and Leiotrichi. 
? Brachyciphals and Dolichocephals. 


— R27 — 


asserting that there are elect and reprobate races? Not 
by any means. If monogenism is accepted, it is evident 
that men, as descendants of one common pair, possess the 
same qualities, the same blood, the same physical and 
psychic constitution. If, on the contrary, polygenism, 
i. e., the initial existence of an indefinite and considera- 
ble number of heterogeneous bands inhabiting the earth, 
is accepted, it becomes impossible to maintain the exist- 
ence of originally superior or inferior races, for the first 
social groupings were effected through the amalgamation 
of these heterogeneous bands whose respective qualities 
and virtues we should not be able to determine, and, still 
less, to classify. “All nations,” says Gumplowicz,' “the 
most primitive that we meet with at the first dawn of his- 
toric times, will be for us the products of a process of 
amalgamation (already ended during the prehistoric 
times) among the heterogeneous ethnic elements.” Thus, 
if the point of view of the identity of origin is taken, the 
ethnologic hierarchy is inadmissible, and, with Alexander 
von Humboldt, it may be asserted that “ there are no eth- 
nic stems that are nobler than others.” 

Race is, however, a fiction. No human group exists 
that can boast of having had two original ancestors and 
having descended from them without any adulteration 
of the primitive stock through mixture; human races are 
not pure, 1. e., strictly speaking, there is no such thing as 
arace. “There is no unity,” says Topinard :' the races 
have divided, scattered, blended, intercrossed in all de- 
grees and directions since thousands of centuries; most 
of them gave up their language in favor of that of their 

*L, Gumplowicz, La Lutte des races (Paris, 1893). 





— 228 — 


conquerors, then gave the same up for a third, if not a 
fourth language; the principal masses have disappeared 
and now we find ourselves face to face with peoples and 
not races.” The anthropologic classification of mankind 
has consequently no value whatever. 

It is true that, in default of anthropologic character- 
istics, the partisans of the ethnologic hierarchy, fall back 
upon linguistic characteristics. As languages are classi- 
fied according to their evolution into monosyllabic, ag- 
glutinative, inflectional and analytical—the “election” 
or “reprobation” of those who speak them has been estab- 
lished on the basis of these various forms of language. 
This claim is at all events untenable, for the Chinese, 
with their monosyllabic language, are inferior neither 
to the Yakuts nor the Kamchatkans, whose speech is ag- 
glutinative, nor to the Zulus who speak an inflectional 
language ; and it would be easy to prove that the Japan- 
ese and Magyars, whose language is agglutinative are in 
no way inferior to certain so-called Aryan nations speak- 
ing an inflectional language. Still, we know that the 
fact of speaking the same language does not imply the 
identity of origin; conquering races have from times 
immemorial forced their language upon other strange 
races, though these latter had no inborn tastes for it; the 
classification of languages can, conséquently, in no way 
determine the ethnic classification of mankind. 

Nevertheless, and however untenable this doctrine of 
the inequality of races, whether from the linguistic or _ 








1Dr. P. Topinard, Anthropologie (Paris, Biblioth. des Sci- 
ences contemporaines.—Reinwald edit.. (There is an English 
translation. ) 


— 229 — 


from the anthropologic point of view, it has been quite 
dominant in our times, and nations have chased and still 
chase this chimera of ethnologic unity, which is but the 
heritage of an ill-informed past and, truth to tell, a form 
of regress. Antiquity had the greatest claims to purity 
of blood, and at present the race idea is most widespread 
and most deeply rooted among the African negroes and 
certain savages. This is simple. The first collective ties 
were blood ties; the first social unit, the family, was 
founded on blood; the city was considered as the family 
enlarged, and at the historical dawn of every city, legend 
placed an ancestral couple, just as an initial couple was 
placed in certain religions, at the early stage of man- | 
kind.1. When new human elements came upon these 
agglomerations, it was necessary to perpetuate this belief 
in the original identity, and this was attained by the fic- 
tion of adoption, and in these remote civilizations only 
the child of the tribe or city, or the adopted one, had 
a place. In all primitive legislations, the foreigner was 
an enemy against whom precaution was necessary, a dis- 
turber who perplexed beliefs and ideas. At the same 
time collective bodies became less uniform as they grew. 
If an interrupted filiation is considered the exclusive 
mark of unity,—we have seen that even in the prehistoric 
times vast hordes hald been formed through the agglomer- 
ation of heterogeneous bands and that the first historic 
states had, in their turn been made up through the ag- 





*The tenth chapter of Genesis presents one of the most per- 
fect types of this belief, in the genealogy of the descendants of 
Noah’s sons; an ancestor is placed at the head of each human 
group of each nation. 


— 230 — 


glomeration of these hordes, who could no longer claim 
the same ancestor for each of its members. In spite of all, 
this idea of the community of origin has survived till our 
days. That is because it takes its origin in an essential 
need: the need of homogeneity, unity, the need which 
impels all societies to reduce their dissimilar ele- 
ments, and this belief in the purity of blood is but an 
external manifestation of the need of unity, it is a way of 
expressing this necessity, a neat, simple and satisfactory 
way for the unconscious and the savage, but at all events 
insufficient and particularly undemonstrable for him 
who is not satisfied with the appearance of things. 

All the same the theory of the inequality of races rests 
on a real fact; its formula ought to be: the inequality of 
nations, for there is every evidence that the destiny of 
different nations has not been similar, but this does not 
mean that the inequality of these nations was original. 
It simply means that certain nations were placed in more 
favorable geographical, climatic and historical conditions 
than those enjoyed by other nations, and that, conse- 
quently, they could develop more happily, more harmo- 
niously ; but not that they had better dispositions or bet- 
ter-formed brains. The proof thereof is in the fact that 
certain nations of the would-be superior white race have 
founded civilizations by far inferior to those of the yel- 
low or even the negro races. There are not, therefore, 
any originally superior peoples or races, but there are 
nations which “wnder certain conditions have founded 
more powerful monarchies and more lasting civiliza- 
tions.” 





*Leon Metchnikoff, La Civilisation et les Grands Fleuves. 


— 231 — 


Whatever they be, true or false, these ethnologic prin- 
ciples which concern us, have, by the very fact of their 
existence,—been one of the causes of antisemitism ; they 
have supplied a scientific appearance to a phenom- 
enon which we shall later recognize as national and 
economic and, through them, the grievances of the anti- 
semites were fortified with pseudo-historical and pseudo- 
anthropological arguments. Indeed, not only was the ex- 
istence admitted of three races,—negro, yellowand white, 
—ranged in hierarchic order, but even in these races sub- 
divisions, categories, were established. At first it was as- 
serted that the white race alone and some families of the 
yellow race were capable of founding superior civiliza- 
tions; presently this white race was divided into two 
branches: the Aryan race and the Semitic race; finally 
it was maintained that the Aryan must be considered the 
most perfect race. Even in our days the Aryan race has 
been subdivided into groups, and this enabled anthropolo- 
gists and chauvinistic ethnologists to declare either that 
the Celtic or the Germanic group must be considered as 

the pure wheat of this Aryan race, already superior as it 
_ was. Modern historians place at the basis of Oriental 
antiquity this problem which, though insoluble, they 
deem paramount. To which stock do the ancient nations 
belong? Are they Aryans, Turanians or Semites? This 
is the question put at the outset of all researches on the 
nations of the Orient. Thus, consciously or uncon- 
sciously, history is modeled after the ethnic tables of 
Genesis—tables also met with among the Babylonians 
and the primitive Greeks—which accounted in a rudi- 


(Paris, 1889.) 





— 2®22 — 


mentary way for the diversity of human groups, by the 
existence of sprouts issued from single parents, each 
sprout then producing a nation. Thus it is the Bible again 
that lends assistance to the antisemites, for in ethnog- 
raphy and history we are still clinging to the explana- 
tions of the Genesis—Shem, Ham and Japhet, only 
replaced by the Semite, the Turanian and the Aryan, 
however impossible it may be to justify these divisions 
linguistically, anthropologically or historically.? 
Without stopping to discuss whether the negro races 
are capable of civilization or not? we must see what is 
understood under the names Aryans and Semites. 
Aryans is the name of all peoples whose language is 
derived from Sanskrit, a language spoken by a human 
group called arya. Now, this group “presents no scien- 
tifically demonstrable unity except from the exclusively 
linguistic point of view.’* All anthropologic unity is 
undemonstrable: the cranial measurements, indices, 
numbers, furnish no proof. In this Aryan chaos are 
found Semitic types, Mongolian types, all types and all 
varieties of types, from the one which is capable of de- 


+The classification is pretty nearly of a piece with the claim 
of the feudal classes, who justified, in the Middle Ages, their 
tyranny by pretending to be Japhetites, while the peasant and 
the serf were Hamites, a fact which made legitimate the rela- 
tions of superior and inferior. 

? We know that that wonderful civilization of Ancient Egypt 
was in great part the work of negroes, who were helped by the 
reds, the Semites, Turanians and some of those white tribes, in 
our days still represented by the African Tuaregs, who have 
never founded any society or anything lasting. There still exist 
in Africa imposing ruins which testify to the existence of a 
negro civilization, strongly developed at one historical epoch. 

® Leon Metchnikoff, loc. cit. 





— 233 — 


veloping morally, intellectually and socially, up to the 
one that remains in everlasting mediocrity. There may 
be observed dolichocephals and brachycephals, men with 
brown skin, others with yellowish and yet others with 
white skin. Still, despite the fact that some tribes of 
Aryan language had no development perceptibly superior 
to that of some agglomerations of negroes, it is not a whit 
less energetically asserted that the Aryan is the most 
beautiful and noblest of the races, that it is the product- 
ive and creative race par excellence, that to it we are in- 
debted for the most wonderful metaphysics, the most 
magnificent lyric, religious and ethical productions and 
that no other race ever was or is susceptible of a like ex- 
pansion. To arrive at such a result, an abstraction is 
naturally made from the indisputable fact that all his- 
torical organisms had been formed of the most dissimilar 
elements, whose respective share in the common work it 
is impossible to determine. 

The Aryan race, then, is superior, and it has proven 
its superiority by resisting the rule of a fraternal and 
rival race—the Semitic. This latter is a ferocious, brutal 
race, incapable of creative power, devoid of any ideal, 
and Universal History is represented as the history of 
the conflict between the Aryan and the Semitic race, a 
conflict which we witness even at present. Each anti- 
semite affords proof of this secular conflict. Even the 
Trojan War becomes, with some, the struggle between the 
Aryan and the Semite, and through the exigencies of the 
case, Paris becomes a Semitic brigand who ravishes 
Aryan beauties. Later on the Median Wars form a phase 
of this great contest, and the great king is pictured as the 


— 234 — 


leader of the Semitic Orient falling upon the Aryan Oc- 
cident; then it is Carthage disputing with Rome over the 
Empire of the World; then Islam advances against 
Christendom, and all through it is pointed with pleasure 
that the Greek has defeated the Trojan and Artaxerxes, 
that Rome triumphed over Carthage, and Charles Martel 
checked Abder-Rahman. Just as they recognize Semites 
in the Trojans, the apologists of the Aryans (on the other 
hand) do not want to see anything but Aryans in those 
heterogeneous and barbarous hordes that besieged the 
wealthy Ilium and in the Medes who subjugated Assyria 
and of whom only one tribe—the Arya-Zantha—was 
Aryan, while the majority was Turanian, no doubt. 
They want to prove that Summer and Accad, the educa- 
tors of the Semites—were Aryans, and some have 
ascribed this noble origin even to ancient Egypt. They 
have done even something better than that with Semitic 
civilizations, they have computed the good and the evil, 
and nowadays it is an article of antisemitic faith, that 
whatever is acceptable or perfect in Semitism had been 
borrowed of the Aryans. 


The Christian antisemites have thus reconciled their 
faith with their animosity, and not stopping short even 
before heresy, they have admitted that the prophets and 
Jesus were Aryans,’ while the anti-Christian antisemites 








1This theory, which has the immense advantage of not resting 
on any foundation, sprang up in Germany and passed from there 
into France and Belgium. De Biez and Edmond Picard have in 
turn upheld it, but they did not bring any even illusory proof in 
support of their assertions. (Cf. Antisemiten—Spiegel, pp. 182, 
s22., Danzig, 1892). 


— 2385 — 


consider the Galilean and the nabis (prophets) as de- 
serving condemnation and inferior Semites. 

Does what we know of the history of ancient and mod- 
ern nations give us the right to accept as genuine this 
riyalry, this struggle, this instinctive opposition between 
the Aryan and the Semitic race? By no means, since 
Semites and Aryans have intermingled in a continuous 
way, and since the Semitic share in all so-called Aryan 
civilizations is considerable. ‘Ten centuries before the 
Christian era the Phoenician cities of the Mediterranean 
had sent out emigrants to the islands, and, after found- 
ing cities which covered the Northern coast of Africa, 
from Hadrumete and Carthage to the Canary Islands, 
successively colonized Greece, which the Aryan invaders 
found so peopled by yellow natives and Semitic colonists 
that Athens was an entirely Semitic city. The case was 
the same in Italy, Spain, France, where the Phoenician 
navigators, e. g., founded Nimes just as they had founded 
Thebes in Boeotia and came to Marseilles just as they 
had made land in Africa. These diverse elements amal- 
gamated later on and were brought into harmony 
through the effect of the climate, mental, intellectual and 
moral surroundings, but they did not remain inactive. 
The Semites transformed the Hellenic genius, i. @., by - 
introducing into it strange elements, they gave it an op- 
portunity of modifying itself. From this point of view, 
the history of Hellenic myths is curious and instructive, 
and this Semitic contribution may be grasped by com- 
paring Hercules to Melkart, or Ashtoreth to Aphrodite. 
Likewise, the Phoenician cups and vases, exported in 
great numbers by the merchants of Tyre and Sidon, 


— 236 — 


served as models for the Greek artists, and thus enabled 
the subtle mind of the Ionians and Dorians to interpret 
the myths represented on them, and the Phoenician 
image-trade helped out much the Greek iconologic myth- 
ology. Again, the Phoenicians brought to the Hellenes 
the alphabet borrowed from the hieroglyphics of ancient 
Egypt; they taught them the mining industry and the 
working of metals, just as Assyria’s pupil, Asia Minor, 
made them familiar with sculpture, and we still possess 
monuments testifying to this influence.—e. g., the lions 
of the Mycenzan Acropolis and those Hellenic goddesses 
which have preserved the types we meet with on the Bab- 
ylonian baked-clay tablets. With their marvelous sense of 
harmony and beauty, with their science of order, of orches- 
tration, as it were, they wrought up these oriental ideas, ” 
transformed and purified them, but, for all that, the 
Greek people was an amalgam of quite different Aryan, 
Turanian and Semitic, even perhaps Hamitic, races, and 
it owed its genius to causes other than the nobility and 
purity of its origin. 

Still the modern antisemites would rigorously admit 
the importance of the Semites in the history of civiliza- 
tion, but would make a classification even there. There 
are, they say, superior and inferior Semites. The Jew 
is the latter type, of the Semites, essentially unproduct- 
ive, from whom men have received nothing and who can 
give nothing. It is impossible to accept this assertion. 
It is true that the Jewish nation has neyer displayed any 





1Cf. Clermont-Ganneau, L’Imagerie phenicienne et la Mytho- 
logie iconologique chez les Grecs. Paris, 1880; and Les An- 
tiquites orientales, Paris, 1890. 


— 27 — 


great aptitudes for the plastic arts, but, through the voice 
of its prophets, it has accomplished a moral work by 
which every nation has been benefited ; it has worked out 
some of those ethical and social ideas which are the leaven 
of humanity; if it has not had any divine sculptors and 
painters, it has had wonderful poets, it has, above all, had 
moralists who had worked for universal brotherhood, 
prophetic pamphleteers who made living and immortal 
the idea of justice, and Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, de- 
spite their violence, fierceness even, have made heard the 
voice of suffering which wants not only to be protected 
against execrable force, but to be freed from it. 

However, if the Phoenician element had incorporated 
itself with the Pelasgian, Hellenic, Latin, Celtic and 
Iberian elements, the Jewish element, by intermingling 
with others, has also contributed to the formation of 
those agglomerations which later on united to form the 
modern nations. The Jew, too, came to sink and disap- 
pear in that enormous crucible which Asia- Minor pre- 
sented, and where the most diverse nations were cast. 
Slowly hellenized, the Jews in Alexandria turned the city 
into one of the most active centres of Christian propa- 
ganda. They were among the first to convert; they 
formed the nucleus of the primitive Church in Alexan- 
dria, Antioch, Rome, and after the disappearance of the 
Ebionites they were absorbed in the total mass of Greek 
and Roman converts. 

Throughout the Middle Ages Jewish blood was inter- 
mingling with Christian blood. Cases of wholesale con- 
version were exceedingly numerous, and it would make 
interesting reading to recount those of the Jews of 


— 238 — 


Braine,' of Tortosa,” those of Clermont converted by Avi- 
tus, the 25,000 converted, as tradition goes, by Vincent 
Ferrer,—all of whom disappeared in the midst of the 
nations among whom they lived. If the Inquisition hin- 
dered, or at least tried to hinder, judaization, it favored 
the absorption of the Jews, and were the Christian anti- 
semites logical they would curse Torquemada and his suc- 
cessors, who helped to pollute Aryan purity by the ad- 
junction of the Jew. The number of Marranos in Spain 
was enormous. In nearly all Spanish families, a Jew 
or a Moor is found at some point of their genealogy ; “the 
noblest houses are full of Jews,” they said, and the car- 
dinal Mendoza y Bovadilla wrote in the sixteenth century 
a pamphlet on the flaws in Spanish lineages.? It was the 
same everywhere, and from the number of apostates an- 
tagonizing their former coreligionists we have ascer- 
tained that the Jews were accessible to Christian seduc- 
tion. 

We have thus made answer to those who maintain the 
purity of the Aryan race; we have pointed out that this 
race, like all the others, was a product of countless mix- 
tures. Not to speak of the prehistoric times we have 
made it clear that the Persian, Macedonian and Roman 
conquests made worse the ethnologic confusion which in- 





1 Saint-Prioux, Histoire de Braine. 

?The Jews of Tortosa converted in thousands after the con- 
ference opened at the instigation of Jerome de Santa Fe. 

1Centinela contra Judios. 

*Francisco Mendoza y Bovadilla, El Tizon de la Nobleza Es- . 
panola, o maculas y sambenitos de sus Linajes (Barcelona, 
1880; Bibliotheca de obras raras).—Cf. also Llorente, Histoire 
de VInquisition (Paris, 1817). 


— 239 — 


creased in Europe still further during the invasions. 
The so-called Indo-Germanic races, stock-full of allu- 
vions even before, intermingled with Chudians, Ugrians, 
Uralo-Altaians. Those among the Europeans who believe 
themselves descended in line direct from Aryan ancestors 
do not keep in mind those so diverse lands which these 
ancestors had traversed in their long journeys, nor all the 
tribes which they had swept along with them, nor all 
those which they found settled wherever they tarried,— 
tribes of unknown races and of uncertain origin, obscure 
and unknown tribes whose blood is still running in the 
veins of those who boast themselves heirs of the legend- 
ary and noble Aryans, as the blood of the yellow Dasyus 
and black Dravidians flows under the skin of the white 
Arya-Hindoos. 

But the idea of Semitic superiority is in no way more 
justifiable than the idea of Aryan superiority, and yet it 
was upheld with as much verisimilitude. Theorists were 
found who asserted and even tried to prove that the Sem- 
ites were the flower of mankind, and that from them 
came whatever good there was in the Aryans. Surely one 
day there will appear, if it has not yet happened, an eth- 
nologist who will be led by his patriotism to prove with 
equal obviousness that the Turanian ought to occupy the 
highest place in history and anthropology. 

At present, the Jews—who consider themselves the 
highest incarnation of Semitism—help in perpetuating 
this belief in the inequality and hierarchy of races. The 
ethnologic prejudice is universal, and those even who suf- 
fer from it are its most tenacious upholders. Antisem- 
ites and philosemites join hands to defend the same doc- 


— 240 — 


trines, they part company only when it comes to award 
the supremacy. If the antisemite reproaches the Jew for 
being a part of a strange and base race, the Jew vaunts 
of belonging to an elect and superior race; to his nobility 
and antiquity he attaches the highest importance and 
even now he is the prey of patriotic pride. Though no 
longer a nation, though protesting against those who see 
in him the representative of a nation encamped among 
strange nations, he nevertheless harbors in the depth of 
his heart this absurdly vain conviction, and thus he is 
like the chauvinists of all lands. Like them he claims to 
be of pure origin, while his assertion is no more well- 
founded, and we have to examine closely the asser- 
tion of Israel’s enemy and of Israel himself: to wit, that 
the Jews are the most united. stable, inpenetrable, irre- 
ducible nation. 


We possess no documents to determine the ethnology of 
the nomadic Bene-Israel, but probable it is that the 
twelve tribes constituting this people, according to the 
tradition, did not belong to a single stock. They were 
doubtless heterogeneous tribes, for, in spite of its legends, 
the Jewish nation cannot, any more than the other na- 
tions, boast of having originated from a single couple, 
and the current conception which represents the Hebrew 
tribe as subdividing into sub-tribes* is but a legendary 
and traditional conception,—that of the Genesis,—and 
one which a portion of historians of the Hebrews have 
wrongly accepted. Already composed of various unities 
among which doubtless were Turanian and Kushite 





* Ernest Renan, Histoire du peuple d’Israel, v. I, 


— 241 — 


groups,t.é.,yellows and blacks,’ the Jews added still other 
strange elements while living in Egypt and in the land 
of Canaan which they conquered. Later on Gog and 
Magog, the Scythians, coming in Josiah’s reign to Jeru- 
salem’s gates, probably left their impress on Israel. But 
starting with the first captivity the mixtures grow in 
number. “During the Babylonian captivity,” says Mai- 
monides,? “the Israelites mingled with all sorts of for- 
eign races and had children, who formed, owing to these 
unions, a kind of a new confusion of tongues,” and yet 
this Babylonia, where there were cities like Mahuza, al- 
most entirely peopled by Persians converted to Judaism, 
was deemed to contain Jews of a purer race than the 
Jews of Palestine. Said an old proverb: “For the purity 
of the race, the difference between the Jews of the Ro- 
man provinces is just as perceptible as the difference be- 
tween dough of mediocre quality and dough made of the 
flour of meal; but, compared to Babylonia, Judea itself 
is like mediocre dough.” 

This means that Judea had undergone many vicissi- 
tudes. It had always been the transit ground for the 
Mizraim and Assur; afterwards, on returning from cap- 
tivity, the Jews united with the Samaritans, Edomites 
and Moabites. After the conquest of Idumea by Hyrcan, 





1Three elements are found at the basis of every civilization: 
the white, the yellow and the black. We see it in Egypt, where 
they adjoined a red element, in Mesopotamia, in India, every- 
where where great empires arose, and it may almost be asserted 
that the co-operation of these three types of mankind is neces- 
sary to establish durable civilizations. 

? Maimonides, Yad Hazaka (the powerful hand), Part I, chap. 
1, 84 


— R42 — 


there were Jewish and Idumean unions, and it was said 
that, during the war with Rome, the Latin conquerors 
had begotten sons. “Are we perfectly sure,” said Rabbi 
Ulla, melancholically, to Judah-ben Ezekiel, “that we are 
not descended from pagans who dishonored the young 
daughters of Zion after the capture of Jerusalem ?” 


But what was most conducive to the introduction of 
foreign blood into the Jewish nation was proselytism. 
The Jews were a propagandist nation par excellence, and 
from the construction of the Second Temple and partic- 
ularly after the dispersion, their zeal was considerable. 
They were exactly those of whom the Gospel says, that 
they ran over “earth and sea to make a proselyte,”? and 
with perfect right could Rabbi Eliezer exclaim : “Where- 
fore has God scattered the Jews among the nations? To 
recruit for Him proselytes everywhere.”? There are 
abundant proofs of the proselyting ardor of the Jews,’ 
and during the first centuries before the Christian era 
Judaism spread with the same vigor as characterized 
Christianity and Mohammedanism later on. Rome, 
Alexandria, Antioch—where nearly all the Jews were 
converted gentiles—Damask, Cyprus were the centres of 
fusion, as I have already pointed out.1 Nay, more, the 
Hasmonide conquerors compelled the vanquished Syri- 
ans to circumcise; kings, carrying their subjects along, 
converted, as, ¢. g., the family of Adiabenus, and the pop- 





1Matth. xxiii. 

7 Talmud Babli, Pesachim, f. 87. 

® Horace, Sat. IV, 143.—Josephus Bell. Jud., vii, I1I., 3.— 
Dio Cassius, xxxvii, xvii, ete., ete. 

ACE Ohi TD choliiandsch: LV. 


— 243 — 


ulation was very mixed in certain cantons of Palestine 
itself, as was the case with Galilea, in that “circle of gen- 
tiles’ where Jesus was to be born. 

The Jewish propaganda did not cease after the Chris- 
. tian era, it was practiced even by force, and when, under 
Heraclius, Benjamin of Tiberias conquered Judaea, the 
Palestinian Christians converted by the wholesale. The 
persistence—the continuity of this propaganda as I 
have said, was one of the causes of theologic antisemitism. 
For centuries long, the councils legislated, and measures 
were taken to prevent the Jews from attracting the be- 
lievers to them, to forbid them to circumcise their slaves, 
to prohibit them to marry Christians. But up to the 
moment of general persecutions, 7. e., until it became 
dangerous to be a Jew, the canonic prescripts were pow- 
erless to check these proselytisms and, at times, when a 
great event took place or a scandal broke out, we can see 
Jewish propaganda at work. A bishop, converted in 514, 
afterwards the deacon Bodon,! demands circumcision and 
assumes the name of Eliezer. Often the popes intervene 
with their bulls—as e. g., Clement IV, in 1255. and 
Honorius IV, in 1288. The kings even take a hand in 
the matter, as did Phillip the Fair, who, in 1298, in- 
structed the justiciars of the realm “to punish the Jews 
who convert to their own faith Christians, by means of 
gifts.” 

All over Europe the Jews attracted proselytes, thus re- 
juvenating their blood by the admixture of new blood. 
They made converts in Spain where successive councils 
at Toledo forbade mixed marriages; in Switzerland, 

1Amolon, Liber contra Judaeos.—Migne, Patr. Lat. CXVI. 





— 2244 — 


where a decree of the fourteenth century sentenced young 
girls to wearing Jewish hats for having begotten children 
by Israelite fathers ; in Poland, in the sixteenth century, 
in spite of Sigismund I’s edicts, if we are to believe the 
historian Bielski.2 And they not only made these unions 
with the so-called Aryan nations in Europe, but also with 
the Uralo-Altaians and Turanians; there the infiltration 
was more considerable. 

On the shores of the Black and the Caspian Sea, the 
Jews had established themselves in great antiquity. The 
story goes that during the war he waged against King 
Tachus (361 B. C.) in Egypt, Artaxerxes Ochus wrested 
the Jews from their land and transferred them to Hyr- 
cania on the Caspian shore. Even if their establishment 
in this region is not so old as claimed by this tradition, 
they still were settled there long before the Christian 
era, witness the Greek inscriptions of Anape, Olbia and 
Panticapea. They emigrated in the seventh and eighth 
centuries from Babylonia and came to the Tatar cities, 
Kertsh, Tarku, Derbend, ete. About 620 they converted 
there a whole tribe, the Khazars, whose territory was in 
the neighborhood of Astrakhan. Legend seized upon this 
fact, which greatly stirred up the Jews of the West, but, 
despite of this, there can be no doubt about it. Isidore 
of Seville, a contemporary of the event, mentions it, and 
afterwards Chasdai Ibn-Shaprut, minister of the Khalif 
Abd-er-Rahman, corresponded with Joseph, the last 





2 Bielski, Chronicon rerum Polonicarum. 

1Vivien de Saint-Martin, Les Khazars (Paris, 1851).—C. 
C. d’Ohlson, Les Peuples du Caucase, Paris, 1828.—Revue des 
Etudes juives, vy. XX, p. 144. 


— 245 — 


Khagan of the Khazars, whose kingdom was destroyed 
by Svyatoslav, prince of Kieff.. The Khazars exercised 
a great influence over the neighboring Slav tribes, the 
Polyane, Syeveryane and Vyatichi, and made numerous 
proselytes among them. 

The Tatar peoples of the Caucasus also embraced Ju- 
daism in the twelfth century, according to the report of 
the traveler Petachya of Ratisbon.? In the fourteenth 
century, there were numerous Jews in the hordes, which, 
with Mamay at their head, invaded the lands surround- 
ing the Caucasus. It was in this nook of Eastern Europe 
that actively went on the fusion of Jews and Uralo-Al- 
taians; here the Semite mixed with the Turanian, and 
even now, in studying the nations of the Caucasus, one 
meets with traces of this mixture among the 30,000 Jews 
of that country and the tribes surrounding them.* 

Thus this Jewish race represented by Jews and anti- 
semites as the most unassailable, most homogeneous of 
races, is strongly multifarious. Antropologists would in 
the first place divide it into two well-defined parts: the 
dolichocephals and the brachycephals. To the first type 
belong the Sephardic Jews—the Spanish and Portuguese 
Jews as well as the greater part of the Jews of Italy and 
Southern France; to the second may be assigned the 





?Basnage, Histoire des Juifs, v. IX, p. 246; and Wagenseil, 
Evercitationes. 

2 Among the Chechens inhabiting the East and Northwest of 
the Caucasus, as well as among the Andis of Daghestan, the 
Jewish type is very widespread. ‘The Tats of the Caspian Sea 
are considered to be Jews, and there are many Jews among 
the Tatar tribes, as the Kumiks, for instance. (Cf. Eckert, Der 
Kaukasus und seine Volker, Leipzig, 1887). 


— R46 — 


Ashkenazim, 7. e., the Polish, Russian and German Jews.” 
But the Sephardim and the Ashkenazim are not the only 
two known varieties of Jews; these varieties are numer- 
ous. 

In Africa are found agricultural and nomadic Jews, 
allied with the Kabyls and Berberians, near Setif, Guel- 
ma and Biskra, at the frontier of Morocco; in caravan 
they go as far as Timbuctoo, and some of their tribes, on 
the borders of Sahara, like the Daggatouns, are black 
tribes,t as also are the Fellah Jews of Abyssinia.? In 
India, one finds white Jews in Bombay, and black Jews 
in Cochin China, but the white Jews have in them mela- 
nian blood. They settled in India in the fifth century, 
after the persecutions of the Persian King Pheroces, who 
banished them from Bagdad. ‘Their settling is at all 
events assigned to a more remote date: the coming of the 
Jews into China, 1. e., before Christ. As to the Jews of 
China, they are not only related to the Chinese surround- 
ing them, but they have also adopted the practices of the 
Confucian religion.® 

The Jew, consequently, has incessantly been trans- 
formed by the environments in which he stayed. He 
has changed because the different languages which he has 





2For the dolichocephalous Jews of Africa and Italy, cf. the 
works of Pruner-Bey (Memoire de la Societe d’anthropologie, II, 
p. 432 and III, p. 82) and Lombroso.—For the brachycephalous 
Jews cf. Copernicki and Mayer, Physical Characteristics of the . 
Population of Galicia, Cracow, 1876 (In Polish). 

1Mardochee Aby Serour, Les Daggatouns, Paris, 1880. 

2On the Fellahs cf. Abbadie, Nouvelles annales des Voyages, 
1845, III, p. 84, and Ph. Luzzato, Archives israelites, 1851-1854. 

® Blie Schwartz, God’s Nation in China. Strassburg, 1880.— 
Abbe Sionnet, Essai sur les Juifs de la Chine, Paris, 1837. 


— Rm — 


spoken, have introduced into his mind different and op- 
posite notions ; he has not remained such as a united and 
homogeneous people ought to be, but, on the contrary, he 
is, at present, the most heterogeneous of all nations, one 
that presents the greatest varieties. And this pretended 
race whose stability and power of resistance friend and 
foe agree in extolling, affords us the most multifarious 
and most opposite types, since they range from the white 
to the black Jew, passing by way of the yellow Jew, not 
to speak of the secondary divisions,—Jews with blonde 
and red hair, and brown Jews with black hair. 

Consequently, the ethnologic grievance of the anti- 
semites does not rest upon any serious and real founda- 
tion. The opposition of the Aryans and the Semites is 
artificial ; it is not correct to say that the Aryan race and 
the Semitic race are pure races, and that the Jew is a sin- 
gle and unvarying people. Semitic blood has mingled with 
Aryan blood and Aryan blood has mixed with Semitic 
blood. Aryans and Semites have both, furthermore, re- 
ceived an admixture of Turanian blood and Hamite, 
Negro or Negroid blood, and in the Babel of nationali- 
ties and races which the world is at present, the pre- 
occupation of those who seek to discover who among his 
neighbors is an Aryan, a Turanian, a Semite, is a vain 
pursuit. — 

In spite of this there is a portion of truth in the griev- 
ance which we have examined, or, rather, the theories of 
the antisemites about the inequality of races and Aryan 
superiority, in one word, the anthropologic prejudices 
are but the veil which covers some real causes of anti- 
semitism. 


— 248 — 


We have said that there are no races, but there are 
peoples and nations. What is improperly called a race 
is not an ethnologic unit, but is an historic, intellectual 
and moral unit. The Jews are not an ethnos, but they 
are a nationality, they are diversified types, it is true, but 
what nation is not diversified? What makes a people is 
not unity of origin, but unity of sentiments, ideas, ethics. © 
Let us see whether the Jews do not present this unity, 
and whether we cannot find therein, in part, the secret of 
the animosity shown them. 


CHAPTER XI. 
NATIONALISM AND ANTISEMITISM. 


The Jews in the World.—Race and Nation.—Are the 
Jews a Nation?—The Midst, the Laws, the Cus- 
toms.—The Religion and the Rites.—The Language 
and Literature—The Jewish Spirit—Does the Jew 
Believe in His Nationality?—The Restoration of 
the Jewish Empire—Jewish Chauvinism.—The 
Jew and the Strangers to His Law.—Is the Talmud 
Anti-Social ?—Once and Now.—The Permanence of 
Prejudices.—Jewish Exclusiveness and Persistence 
of the Type-—The Principle of Nationalities in the 
Nineteenth Century——In Germany and Italy.—In 
Austria, in Russia and Eastern Europe.—Panger- 
manism and Panslavism.—The Idea of Nationality, 
the Jew and Antisemitism—The Heterogeneous 


— 29 — 


Elements in the Nations.—Elimination or Absorp- 
tion.— National Egoism.—Preservation or Trans- 
formation.—The Two Tendencies.—Patriotism and 
Humanitarianism.—Nationalism, Internationalism 
and Anti-Semitism.—Jewish Cosmopolitanism and 
the Idea of Fatherland.—The Jews and the Revolu- 
tion. 


There are about eight million Jews scattered over the 
face of the earth,’ nearly seven-eighths of which inhabit 
Europe.’ Among these Jews figure the Bedoween Jews 
living on the confines of Sahara, the Daggaouns of the 





1TIt is very difficult to estimate exactly the Jewish popula- 
tion of the world. On the one hand the antisemites overdraw 
the probable figures, desirous as they are of proving the Jewish 
invasion ; on the other hand, the Jews or the philosemites, led on 
by contrary interests, in their turn diminish these figures. Thus 
the antisemites readily give the number as nine millions, if not 
all ten, the philosemites or the Jews (Cf. Loeb, article “Jew” 
in Vivien de Saint-Martin’s Dictionaire de Geographie.—Th. 
Reinach, Histoire des Israelites) give the number at 6,300,000; 
but in their estimate they set down the number of Russian Jews 
at 2,552,000, which is much below the actual figures of 4,500,000 
at the least (Leo Efrera, Les Juifes Russes). I have therefore 
adopted 8,000,000 as the total population, which seemed to me 
the figure nearest approaching the truth. [The figure is an un- 
derestimate; the number of Russian Jews, according to the 
Russian census of 1897, was 5,700,00.—Translator. ] 

1Tt is possible that the increasing emigration of Polish and 
Russian Jews to the United States should cause a difference in 
in these figures. At present there are about 250 or 300 thou- 
sand Jews in the United States, [about 1,135,00 in 1902.— 
Translator] and if their number does not enormously increase 
from year to year, it means that the Jews of the United States 
have a very marked tendency to blend in the surrounding popu- 
lation. This refers to the fact that the majority of the Jewish 
immigrants belong to the working class. 


— 250 — 


desert, the Fellahs of Abyssinia, the black Jews of India, 
the Mongoloid Jews of China, the Kalmuk and Tatar 
Jews of the Caucasus, the blonde Jews of Bohemia and 
Germany, the brown Jews of Portugal, Southern France, 
Italy and the Orient, the dolichocephalous Jews, the bra- 
chycephalous and sub-brachycephalous Jews, all Jews, 
who, according to the section of their hair, the shape of 
their skull, the color of their skin, could be classified, on 
the strength of the best principles of ethnology, into four 
or five different races, as we have just shown. 

By comparing, e. g., the inhabitants of the different 
departments of France, we might, in exactly the same 
way, prove that the differences observable between a Pro- 
vencal and a Breton, a Niceois and a Picardian, a Nor- 
mandian and Aquitanian, a Lorrain and a Basque, an 
Auvergnat and a Savoyard do not permit the belief in the 
existence of the French race. 

Still, proceeding in this way, we shall really have 
proven that the race is not an ethnologic unity, 7. e@., 
that no people is a descendant of common parents, and 
that no nation has been formed from the aggregation of 
cells of this kind. But we shall by no means have proven 
that there exists no French people, a German people, an 
English people, ete., and we should not be able to do 
it, since there exists an English literature, a German 
literature, a French literature, different literatures all 
of them, expressing in a different way common senti- 
ments, it is true, but whose objective and subjective play 
upon the various individuals affected by them is not the 
same, sentiments common to human nature, but ones 
which each man and each collection of men feels and ex- 


— 251 — 


presses in a different way. We have had to reject the an- 
thropologic notion of race, a notion which is erroneous 
and which we shall see to have given origin to the worst 
opinions, the most detestable and least justifiable van- 
ities, that anthropologic notion which tends to make of 
each people an association of proud and egoistic recluses, 
butwe are forced to admit the existence of historical units 
1. €., separate nations. For the idea of race we substi- 
tute the idea of nation, and again we have to make an 
explanation, for the nineteenth century based its belief 
in nationalities on its belief in race, and an innate race 
at that. 

What is commonly understood by race? According to 
Littré, a nation is a “union of human beings inhabiting 
the same territory subjected or not subjected to the same 
government, and having had common interests long 
enough to allow of considering them as belonging to the 
same race.” ‘To this definition of a nation Littré opposes 
that of a people: “A multitude of human beings who 
even though not inhabiting the same country, have the 
same religion and are of the same origin.” According to 
Mancini,’ a nation is a “naturalcommunityofhuman_be- 
ings united by their country, origin, manners, language, 
and being conscious of this community.” To follow 
Bluntschli,? a people may be defined as follows: “The 
community of spirit, sentiment, race, which has become 
hereditary in a mass of human beings of different pro- 








1Mancini, Della Nazionalita come fondamento del diritto delle 
genti. Naples, 1873. 

? Bluntschli, Theorie generale de l’Etat. (Traduction A. de 
Piedmatten) Paris, 1891. 


— r2 — 


fessions and classes ; a mass which—leaving the political 
bond out of consideration—feels united by culture and 
origin, especially by language and manners, and which 
is strange to others.” As for nation, again to follow 
Bluntschli, it is a “community of men united and or- 
ganized into a state.” Thus it is plain that in order to 
succeed in discriminating a people from a nation one 
must introduce either a territorial unity, as does Littré, 
or a state unity as does Bluntschli; in other words, an 
outside matter, one above those constituting the people 
and the nation which can actually be identified. 

Tosum up. Customarily a nation is called an agglom- 
eration of individuals having in common their territory, 
language, religion, law, customs, manners, spirit, his- 
toric mission. Now, we have seen that a common race, 
innate race, a race implying the same origin and purity 
of blood is but a fiction; the idea of race is not neces- 
sarily linked with the conception of a nation—proof that 
the Basques, Bretons, Provencals, belong all to the 
French nation, though very different anthropologically. 
As for territorial community, it is not a whit more ne- 
cessary; the Poles, e. g., possess no common territory, 
and yet there is a Polish nation. Language, too, does not 
seem indispensable, and indeed one may refer to Swit- 
zerland, Austria, Belgium, in which countries two or 
several languages are spoken, but these countries, organ- 
ized,—with the exception of Switzerland,—federatively, 
permit us on the contrary, to assert that language is 
clearly the sign of nationality, since in all of them those 
speaking the same language strive to group together, in 
other words, that one language tends to become prepon- 


— 253 — 


derant and destroy the others. Religion was formerly 
one of the most important forces that contributed to the 
formation of peoples. We cannot possibly realize what: 
Rome, Athens or Sparta had been, if we disregard the 
Gods of Olympus and the Capitolium; the same is true 
of Memphis, Nineveh, Babylon and Jerusalem, and what 
becomes of the Middle Ages if we leave out Christianity ? 
The influence of religion was preponderant for centuries 
long, but since a few years it has had a very limited 
power, and in certain countries only, as in Russia, for 
instance, the unity of faith is sought for and is made one 
of the constitutive and indispensable elements of nation- 
ality. Elsewhere multiplicity of religious confessions 
is no obstacle to unity; still it is well to add, that in all 
European lands religion was the first unity known, and 
that, leaving the Ottoman Empire out of account, all 
the European States and peoples were first of all Chris- 
tian States and peoples. The Reformation was the last 
religious effort aiming at unity, and after the religious 
war the toleratiow edicts marked the end of the domina- 
tion of dogmas over nationalities. Still, Christianity 
has left its impress on manners, customs, morality. 
However its principles, metaphysics, ethics be judged, 
it has been one of the most important factors in the 
life of the European nations and the individuals com- 
posing them; it is the common ground on which the 
various edifices have been built; it is ‘one of the funda- 
mental notions’to which a good many others were added, 

which have been worked in various ways but are found in 
the strata of modern societies. Christianity was one of 
the steady elements of the spirit of various peoples of the 


— 254 — 


old and the new continent, but what has differentiated 
the peoples and created their personality—was the man- 
ners, customs, art, language with the thousand peculiar 
ideas which it generates by means of its literature, and 
philosophy. The dissimilarity of individuals is caused 
by the different way in which they interpret general and 
common ideas, as also by the different way in which they 
are impressed by phenomena and the manner in which 
they construe them. It is the same with collective bodies. 
They consist of various beings, each of whom, it is true, 
is a substance apart, but all follow certain directions in 
common. What gives these directions? Language, next, 
also, the traditions, interests and historic destinies be- 
longing to all these beings in common. But to this 
must be added—as was done by Mancini,—the conscious- 
ness of this community. This consciousness was slowly 
worked out in the course of ages, through thousands of 
blows from outside, thousands of struggles within, but | 
the nations began to exist only on the day when they 
came to this self-consciousness, and once born this con- 
sciousness became one more factor for nationality. 
Without it there is no nationality; but once it exists it 
reacts, in its turn, on the brains of each individual and 
this national self-consciousness, the last to be formed, is 
also the last to disappear, after the territory, manners, 
practices, customs, and religion have disappeared and 
literature no longer lives. 

Nations, consequently, do exist. These nations may 
sometimes not be organized under the same government ; 
they may have lost their fatherland, their language, but 
the nation continues as long as have not disappeared this 


— 255 — 


self-consciousness and the consciousness of that com- 
munity of thought and interests which they represent 
by the fictitious background of race, filiation, origin and 
purity of blood. 

Now let us turn to the Jew. We have seen that he 
does not exist, as far as race is concerned, and those are 
in error who say: “There is no longer a Jewish people, 
there is a Jewish fellowship closely united with a race.”? 
It remains to inquire whether the Jew is not a part of a 
nation composed, like all nations, of various elements, 
and nevertheless possessing unity. Now, if we leave 
aside the Abyssinian Fellaheen, some little known no- 
madic Jewish tribes of Africa, the black Jews of India, 
and the Chinese Jews, we arrive at the conclusion that 
by the side of the pointed out differences which distin- 
guish these Jews they possess also common peculiarities, 
a common individuality and a common type. Still, the 
Jews have lived in quite contrasting countries, they were 
subjected to very diverse climatic influences, they were 
surrounded by very dissimilar peoples. What is it that 
succeeded in keeping them such as they have remained 
until to-day? Why do they continue to exist otherwise 
than as a religious confession? This is due to three 
causes: one depending on the Jews—religion; another 
for which they are partly responsible—their social con- 
dition; the third, which is external—the condition: 
which have been forced upon them. 

No religion has ever moulded soul and spirit as has 
the Jewish religion. Nearly all religions have had a 








* A. Franck, lecture on “Religion and Science in Judaism,” iu 


Annuaire de la Societe des Etudes Juives, 2nd year. 


— x56 — 


philosophy, ethics, a literature alongside of their re- 
ligious dogmas; with Israel religion was simultaneously 
ethics and metaphysics, nay, more, it was law. The 
Jews had no symbolic independence from their legisla- 
tion ; no, after the return from the second captivity, they 
had Yahweh and his-Law, each inseparable from the 
other. To become part of the nation one had to accept 
not its God only, but also all legal prescriptions emanat- 
ing from Him and bearing the stamp of sanctity. Had 
the Jew had only Yahweh, he would probably have van- 
ished in the midst of the different peoples that had re- 
ceived him, just as had vanished the Phoenicians who 
carried only Melkart with them. But the Jew had some- 
thing more than his God—he had his Torah, his law, 
and by it he has been preserved. He not only did not 
lose this law when losing his ancestral territory, but, on 
the contrary, he has strengthened its authority; he has 
developed it; he has increased its power as well as its 
property. After the destruction of Jerusalem the law 
became the bond of Israel; he lived for and by his law. 
But this law was minute and meddlesome, it was the 
most perfect manifestation of the ritual religion—into 
which the Jewish religion turned under the influence of 
its doctors, an influence which may be contrasted with 
the spiritualism of the prophets whose tradition Jesus 
carried on. These rites which foresaw every act in 
life, and which the Talmudists made infinitely compli- 
cated, have given shape to the Jewish brain, and every- 
where, in all lands, they have shaped it in the same man- 
ner. Though scattered, the Jews thought the same way 
in Seville, York, Ancona, Ratisbon, Troyes and Prague ; 


— 27 — 


they had the same feelings and ideas about human be- 
ings and things; thew viewed things through the same 
eye-glasses ; they judged according to similar principles, 
of which they could not get rid, since there were no 
small and grave obligations in the law, all of them had 
the same import, as they all emanated from God. All 
those attracted by the Jews were caught in the terrible 
gear which kneaded the minds and cast them into a 
uniform mould. Thus the law created peculiarities ; 
these peculiarities the Jews transmitted to one another, 
as they constituted everywhere a close association keep- 
ing strictly aloof, in order to be able to perform the 
legal prescriptions, and thus having still more power 
of preservation as it was opposed to penetration. The 
law created not only particularities but it created types 
as well: a moral type as well as a physical type. The 
influence which the exercise of mental faculties and the 
direction of these faculties have on the physiological in- 
dividual is well known. It is known that certain human 
beings engaged in the same intellectual pursuits acquire 
special and similar traits. Under our very eyes profes- 
sional types are in the process of formation, and Gal- 
ton’s experiments with this creation of common char- 
acteristics by means of common thought are well known. 
The Jewish type has been formed in a way analogous 
to that in which were formed and are still forming 
the type of a physician, the type of a lawyer, etc., types 
produced by the identity of the social and psychic func- 
tion. The Jew is a confessional type; such as he is he 
has beenmade by the lawand the Talmud ; more powerful 
than blood or climatic varieties, they have developed in 


— 258 — 


him the characteristics which imitation and heredity 
have perpetuated. 

Social characteristics were added to these confessional 
characteristics. We have spoken’ of the role played by 
the Jew during the Middle Ages, how internal and ex- 
ternal causes, proceeding from economic and psycholog- 
ical laws, led them to become almost exclusively traders, 
and above all dealers in gold at a time when capital 
was forced to be creditor in order to be productive. 
This role was general ; the Jews filled it in all countries, 
not in any particular one only. To their common 
religious preoccupations were consequently added com- 
mon social preoccupations. As a religious being the Jew 
was already thinking in a certain way wherever he was; 
as a social being he again thought identically ; thus other 
peculiarities were created, which, too, spread peculiar- 
ities, the formation of which was general and simul- 
taneous with all Jews. But however he isolated him- 
self, the Jew was not alone; the peoples he lived among 
reacted on him and could be causes of changes. The 
natural midst is not everything for a man living in 
society. True, its influence is great, and sometimes it 
may, in a high degree contribute to the formation of 
nations,’ but there is a social midst whose influence is 
not less considerable, and this social midst is created 
by the laws, manners and customs. Had the Jews lived 
in different social surroundings, they would, no doubt, 





1Chapt. VII. 

1For instance the transformations of the Anglo-Saxons in 
the United States of America, and the transformations of the 
Dutch in the Transvaal. 


— 29 — 


have been different mentally as well as physically. This 
was not the case, and their social and political midst was 
the same everywhere. In Spain, France, Ifaly, Germany, 
Poland, the legislation against the Jews was identical, 
a fact quite easy of explanation as in all these lands the 
legislation was inspired by the church. The Jew was 
placed under the same restrictions, the same barriers | 
were built around him, he was ruled by the same laws. 
He had kept apart, and so they kept him apart; he had 
endeavored to distinguish himself from the others, and 
they distinguished him; he had retired into his abode to 
be able to perform freely his rites—he was shut up in 
his Ghettoes. The Jew obtained a territory on the day 
he was imprisoned in these Jewries, and the Israelites 
lived since then exactly like a people that had a father- 
land of its own; in these special quarters they pre- 
served their customs, manners and secular habits, scrup- 
ulously transmitted by an education which was every- 
where guided by the same invariable principles. 

‘This education did not preserve the traditions only, 
it was preserving the language. The Jew spoke the lan- 
guage of the country he inhabited, but he spoke it only 
because it was indispensable in his business transactions ; 
once at home he made use of a corrupt Hebrew or of a 
jargon of which Hebrew formed the basis. For writing 
purposes he employed Hebrew, and the Bible and the 
Talmud do not constitute the whole of Hebrew litera- 





1If I seem to say that all Jews are alike physically, I want to 
speak of their general physiognomy only, which is their common 
property, without prejudicing the truth about the differences 
which I have stated, 


— 260 — 


ture. The Jewish literary productivity from the eighth 
to the fifteenth century was very great. There has been 
a neo-hebraic poetry of the synagogue, which was par- 
ticularly copious and brilliant in Spain ;* there has been 
a Jewish religious philosophy which was born with 
Saadiah in Egypt and which Ibn Gebirol and Maimon- 
ides developed afterwards; there has been a Jewish 
theology since the time of Joseph Albo and Jehuda 
‘Halevi, and Jewish metaphysics—that is the Kabbala. 
This literature, this philosophy, this theology, these 
metaphysics were the common property of the Israelites 
of all countries. Up to the moment when the obscurant- 
ist efforts of the rabbis had closed their ears and their 
eyes,—their spirit drew upon the same source, they were 
roused by the same thoughts, they dreamt the same 
dreams, they made merry to the same rhythms, the 
same poetry, the same preoccupations-went with them 
and thus they underwent the same impressions, which 
similarly shaped their spirit, that Jewish spirit com- 
posed of a thousand diverse elements and still not per- 
ceptibly different from the ancient Jewish spirit, at 
least in its general tendencies, for those who aided in 
creating it were brought up on the ancient law. 

Thus, consequently, the Jews had the same religion, 
manners, habits and customs, they were subjected to 
the same civil, religious, moral and restrictive laws; 
they lived in similar conditions; in each city they 
had their own territory, they spoke the same language, 





Cf. Munk, De la Poesie hebraique apres la Bible, in Temps of 
Jan. 19, 1835, and the works of Zunz, Rappoport and Abraham 
Geiger. Cf. also Amador de los Rios, Histoire des Juifs d’Es- 
pagne (1875). 


— R61 — 


they enjoyed a literature, they speculated over the same 
persisting and very old ideas. This alone was sufficient 
to constitute a nation. They had even more than that: 
they have had the consciousness of being a nation, that 
they had never ceased to be one. After they had left 
Palestine, in the first centuries before the Christian era, 
a bond always tied them to Jerusalem; after Jerusalem 
had been plunged in flames, they had their exilarchs, 
their Nassis and Gaons, their schools of doctors, schools 
of Babylon, Palestine, then Egypt, finally of Spain and 
France. The chain of tradition has never been broken. 
They have ever considered themselves exiles and have 
deluded themselves with the dream of the restoration of 
Israel’s kingdom on earth. Every year, on the eve of 
the Passover they have chanted from the depth of their 
whole beings, three times the sentence: “Leshana haba 
b’Yerushalaim” (the next year in Jerusalem!). They 
have preserved their ancient patriotism, even their 
chauvinism; in spite- of disasters, misfortunes, out- 
rages, slavery, they have considered themselves the elect 
people, one superior to all other peoples, which is char- 
acteristic of all chauvinist nations, the Germans as well 
as the French and English of to-day. At one time in the 
beginning of the Middle Ages, the Jew was really su- 
perior, because, he, the inheritor of an already ancient 
civilization, the possessor of a literature, philosophy and 
above all experience, which should have given him the 
advantage, came into the midst of barbarian children. 
He lost that supremacy, and in the fourteenth century 
even, his was already a culture lower than the general 
culture of those in the same class with him. But he has 


MOET, - as 


religiously kept this idea of supremacy, has kept on look- 
ing with disdain and scorn upon all those who were 
strangers to his law. However, he was taught to be such 
by his book, the Talmud pervaded by a narrow and 
ferocious patriotism. The book has been charged with 
being anti-social, and there is some truth in this accu- 
sation ; it has been claimed that it is the most abominable 
code of law and ethics, and therein lay the error, since 
it is neither more nor less execrable than all particularist 
and national codes. If it is anti-social, it is so only in 
that it represented and still represents a spirit differing 
from that of the laws in force in the country where the 
Jews lived and that the Jews wanted to follow their code 
before following the one to which every member of so- 
ciety was amenable, and again it is unsocial only in a 
relative sense, as the law was not always uniform and 
custom invariable in all parts of the States. At one 
moment of history it appeared fatally anti-human, be- 
cause it remained immutable while everything was 
changing. Its brutality has been exposed by the Chris- 
tian antisemites, because this brutality shocked them di- 
rectly, but in saying, “Kill even the best of Goyim,” 
Rabbi Simon ben Jochai was no more cruel than was 
Saint Louis, who thought that the best way of arguing 
with a Jew was to plunge a dirk in his belly, or than the 
Pope Urban III. when he wrote in his bull: “Every- 
body is allowed to kill an excommunicate if it is done 
from zeal for the church.” 

One thing, besides, has to be taken into account. Some 
modern Jews and philosemites have rejected with horror 
those aphorisms and axioms that had been national © 


— 263 — 


aphorisms and axioms. They say that the invectives 
against the goyim, the Mineans, were directed at the 
Romans,the Hellenes,the Jewish apostates, but they were 
never aimed at the Christians. There is a great deal of 
truth in these assertions, but there is also a great deal 
of error. Indeed, a portion of the prescriptions against 
strangers, prescriptions that were the work of the Jews 
defending their national spirit, must be referred to the 
time when the Jewish nationality was menaced, when 
the Jewish spirit was broken in by the Greek spirit, and 
when Hellenic influence threatened to become prepond- 
erant. Maledictions became more violent afterwards, 
beginning with the Roman Wars; everything was deemed 
permissible against the oppressor, every kind of violence, 
of hatred was extolled, and the Talmud but echoed these 
sentiments, it catalogued the precepts and words, and it 
perpetuated them. When Judaism was fought by the 
rising Christianity, all the hatred and wrath of hired 
assassins, patriots, pious people turned upon the Jews 
who were converting themselves—the Mineans. When 
deserting the national faith they deserted the battle 
against Rome and the enemy; they were traitors to 
their country, to the Jewish religion; they lost interest 
in a struggle that was vital for Israel; gathered around ~ 
their new temples they looked with an eye of indiffer- 
ence upon the fall of the national glory, the disappear- 
ance of their autonomy, and not only did they not fight 
against the she-wolf, but they even unnerved the cour- 
age of those listening to them. Against them, against 
these anti-patriots, formulas of malediction were drawn 
up ; the Jews placed them under the ban of their society, 


— r264 — 


it was lawful to kill them, just as it was lawful to kill 
“the best of goyim.” Similar exhortations would be found 
at all periods of patriotic struggles, among all nations; 
the proclamations of the generals, the calls to arms of the 
tribunes of all ages contain just as odious formulas. 
‘When the French, for instance, invaded the Palatinate, 
it must have been a rule, nay, even a duty, for all Ger- 
mans to say: “Death even to the best of Frenchmen!” 
Similarly, when the Germans, in their turn, entered 
France, it was doubtless the Frenchman’s turn to say: 
“Death even to the best of Germans!” It is cruel, ex- 
ecrable war that generates these sentiments, and anti- 
human ferocity manifests itself whenever this warrior 
spirit is awakened by the circumstances. It is further 
said that with the Jews these precepts have represented 
only personal opinions, and by their side may be found 
moral formulas as humane, brotherly and as full of com- 
passion as the Christian formulas. This is true, and 
in the spirit of the Fathers who had written these max- 
ims, gathered in the Pirke Aboth,’ these humanitarian 
maxims had a general meaning, but the Jew of the Mid- 
dle Ages who found them in his book attributed to them 
a restricted meaning; he applied them to those of his 
nation. Why? Because this book, the Talmud, con- 
. tained also egotistic, cruel and nationalist precepts di- 
rected against strangers. Preserved in this book of 
enormous authority, in this Talmud which to the Jew 
has been a code, an expression of their nationality, which 
has been their soul,—these cruel or narrow-minded as- 





1Pirke Aboth (Traite des Principes), with a French trans- 
lation and notes by A. Crehange (Paris, Durlacher). 


— 265 — 


sertions have acquired at least a moral if not a legal 
force. The Talmudist Jew who found them attributed 
to them a permanent import, he applied them to all his 
enemies, he made of it a general rule toward strangers 
to his faith, his law, his beliefs. There came a day when 
the Jew had but one enemy in Europe—the Christian— 
who persecuted, hunted, massacred, burned, martyrized 
him. As a consequence he could not experience any very . 
tender feeling toward the Christian, the more so that 
all the efforts of the Christian were bent on destroying 
Judaism, on annihilating the religion which from that 
time on constituted the Jewish fatherland. The goy 
of the Maccabees, the Minean of the doctors, turned into 
the Christian, and to the Christian all the words of fu- 
rious hatred, wrath and despair found in the book, were 
applied. To the Christian, the Jew was a despicable 
being, but to the Jew the Christian became the goy, the 
execrable stranger, who fears no pollution, who mal- 
treats the elect nation, one through whom Judah suf- 
fers. This word goy comprehended all the passions, 
scorns, hatreds of persecuted Israel—against the 
stranger, and this cruelty of the Jews toward the non- 
Jew is one of the things that best prove how long-lived 
the idea of nationality was among the children of Jacob. 
They have always believed themselves a people. Do 
they still believe it at present? 

Among the Jews who receive a Talmudic education, 
and this means the majority of the Jews in Russia, Po- 
land, Galicia, Hungary, Bohemia and the Orient, the 
idea of nationality is still as alive at present as it had 
been during the Middle Ages. They still form a people 


— 266 — 


apart, fixed, rigid, congealed by the scrupulously ob- 
served rites, by the unvarying customs and the manners ; 
_ hostile to every innovation, to every change, rebelling 
against all attempted efforts to detalmudize him. In 
1854 the rabbis anathematized the Oriental schools 
founded by French Jews, where profane sciences. were 
taught; at Jerusalem, an anathema was hurled, in 1856, 
against the school established by Doctor Franckel. In 
Russia and Galicia, sects like those of the New Chas- 
sidim are still opposing all attempts made to civilize the 
Jews. In all these countries only a minority escapes the 
Talmudic spirit, but the mass persists in its isolation, 
and however great its abjection and its humiliation, it 
ever holds itself the chosen people, the nation of God. — 
_ This intolerant aversion toward the stranger has dis- 
appeared among the Western Jews, the Jews of France, 
England, Italy and a great portion of the German Jews. 
The Talmud is no longer read by these Jews, and the 
Talmudic ethics, at least the nationalist ethics of the 
Talmud, have no longer any hold on them. They no 
longer observe the 613 laws, have lost their fear of im- 
purity, a horror which the Eastern Jews have preserved ; 
the majority no longer know Hebrew; they have for- 
gotten the meaning of the antique ceremonies; they 
have transformed the rabbinic Judaism into a religious 
rationalism ; they have given up the familiar observances, 
and the religious exercise has been reduced by them to 
passing several hours in the year in a synagogue listening 
to hymns they no longer understand. They can’t attach 
themselves to a dogma, a symbol; they have none of it; 





1T leave apart the Polish Jews of Germany. 


— 267 — 


in giving up the Talmudic practices they have given up 
what made their unity, that which contributed to form- 
ing their spirit. The Talmud had formed the Jewish 
nation after its dispersion; thanks to it, individuals of 
diverse origin had constituted a people; it had been the 
mould of the Jewish soul, the creator of the race; it and. 
the restrictive laws of the various societies have modeled 
it. It appears that with the legislators abolished, the 
Talmud left in disdain, the Jewish nation should inevit- 
ably have died, and yet the Western Jews are Jews still. 
They are Jews, because they have kept perennial and liv- 
ing their national consciousness; they still believe they 
are a nation,and,believing that,they preserve themselves. 
When the Jew ceases to have the national consciousness 
he disappears; so long as he has this consciousness, hey 
continues to be. He has, he practices his religious faith 
no longer, he is irreligious, often even an atheist, but 
he continues to be, because he has a belief in his race. 
He has kept his national pride, he always fancies him- 
self a superior individuality, a different being from those 
surrounding him, and this conviction prevents him from 
assimilating himself, for, being always exclusive, he gen- 
erally refuses to mix through marriage with the peoples 
surrounding him. Modern Judaism claims to be but a 
religious confession; but in reality it is an ethnos be- 
sides, for it believes it is that, for it has preserved its 
prejudices, egoism, and its vanity as a people—a belief, 
prejudices, egoism and vanity which make it appear a 
stranger to the peoples in whose midst it exists, and 
here we touch upon one of the most profound causes of 
antisemitism. Antisemitism is one of the ways in which 


— R68 — 


the principle of nationalities is manifested. 

What is this question of nationalities? By it is un- 
derstood “the movement which carries certain popula- 
tions, of the same origin and language, but constituting 
a part of different States,—to unite in such a way as 
to make a single political body, a single nation.’”? 

Simultaneously with proclaiming the rights of the 
the land, formerly the property and domain of the 
peoples the Revolution overthrew the old conception of 
rule and dynasty on which the nations were founded ; 
the land, formerly the property and domain of the 
kings, now became the domain of the people that oc- 
cupied them. The royal government in itself consti- 
tuted the national unity,—the representative, constitu- 
tional government placed that unity somewhere else: in 
the community of origin and language. The artificial 
bond being broken, a natural bond was sought for; there 
have been efforts on the part of nations to acquire an 
individuality; they all strove for the unity they lacked. 
It was about 1840 that nationalist ideas especially mani- 
fested themselves, they began the work,and contemporary 
Europe was founded through them. The theory of a 
National State was wrought out by the savants, histor- 
ians, philosophers, poets of a whole generation. “Every 
people has been called to form a State, has a right to 
organize into a State. Mankind is made up of peoples, 
the world must be divided into corresponding nations. 
Each people is a State, each State a national body.” 
This theory, these ideas became mighty and irresistible 


+Laveleye, Le Gouvernment dans la Democratie, vy. I, p. 58 
(Paris, 1891). 
+ Bluntschli, Theorie generale de U’Etat, p. 84. 





i — 


as 969). va 


forces. They are what made the unity of Germany, of 
~ Italy, and they have been the causes of irredentism ; they, 
too, are what creates separatism in Ireland and Austria, 
what calls forth the struggles between the Magyars and 
Slavs, the Chekhs and Germans. On these ideas of 
nationalities Russia and Germany have been and are 
resting to make up their empire, Pangermanic or Pan- 
slavic ; and is not this Panslavism, and this Pangerman- 
ism what agitates the East of Europe, do not the des- 
tinies of that part of Europe depend on this remote or 
near clash of theirs ? 

It would be out of place to discuss here the legitimacy 
or illegitimacy of this movement. It will suffice for our 
purpose merely to state its existence. How do the peo- 
ples construe this tendency into unity? In two ways: 
either by uniting under the same government all in- 
dividuals who speak the national language, or by re- 
ducing all heterogeneous elements coexisting in the na- 
tions, for the benefit of one of these elements which be- 
comes preponderant and whose characteristics hence- 
forth become the national characteristics. Thus the 
Germans have endeavored to assimilate the Alsatians 
and Poles; the Russians compel the Poles to maintain 
the Russian universities which denationalize them; in 
Austria the Germans try to absorb the Chekhs; in 
Hungary, “Slovak orphans are taken from the places 
where their native tongue is spoken and removed to 
Magyar comitats.”? If these heterogeneous elements do 
not let themselves be absorbed, there comes a struggle, 
a violent struggle often, which is manifested in many 








1J. Novicow, Les luttes entre societes humaines, Paris, 1893. 


— 2700 — 


various ways—from persecution down to expulsion in 
some cases. 

Now, in the midst of the European nations the Jews 
live as a confessional community, believing in the lat- 
ter’s nationality, having preserved a peculiar type, spe- 
cial aptitudes and a spirit of their own. In their strug- 
gle against the heterogeneous elements which they con- 
tained, the nations were led to struggle against the Jews, 
and antisemitism was one of the manifestations of the 
effort made by the peoples in order to reduce these 
strange individualities. 

To be reduced, these individualities must be absorbed 
or eliminated, and the process of social reduction does 
not differ perceptibly from the process of physiological 
reduction. In the beginning, when heterogeneous hu- 
man bands covered the earth, they began to struggle 
for existence and did not think it possible to develop 
unless by suppressing the stranger who existed by their 
side. Cannibalism is the first degree of elmination. 
When the nations were formed by the fusion and 
homogeneization of heterogeneous hordes, they tended 
rather to absorb the stranger, although the tendency 
toward elimination still existed. Having reached a 
certain stage of development, the primitive societies 
came to aim at isolation, exclusivism, mutual hatred; 
while in the process of formation these national charac- 
teristics thus escaped all shocks, all changes, and exclu- 
siveness was, perhaps, indispensable for a certain time, 
in order that types might be formed. When these types 
were solidly formed, it became useful to add new cells 
to the original aggregate owing to the danger that this 


— Re1 — 


ageregate might crystallize and immobilize, as hap- 
pened in certain cases. Accordingly, the stranger was 
allowed to enter the nation, but this was allowed with 
great precautions by surrounding the naturalization and 
adoption with a thousand regulations, and whoever 
wished to remain a stranger in society was placed under 
very annoying restrictions. The laws were very hard on 
those who were not nationalists. The Jewish law is 
charged with being merciless toward the non-Jew, but 
the Roman law was not tender with the non-Roman, who 
was without rights as the non-Greek was in Athens and 
Sparta. Even to-day national exclusivism or egoism is 
manifested in the same way, it is still as alive as was 
the family egoism of which it is but an extension. It 
may even be said that by a kind of regression it is ac- 
tually asserting itself with more force. Every nation 
seemingly wants to rear around itself a Chinese wall, 
there is talk of preserving the national patrimony, the © 
national soul, the national spirit, and the word guest re- 
gains in contemporary civilizations the same meaning as 
it had acquired in Roman law: the meaning of hostis, 
enemy. The economic and political rights of the immi- 
grant are being restricted in every possible way. There 
is opposition to immigration, strangers are even ex- 
pelled when their number grows too great, they are con- 
sidered a menace to the national culture which they 
modify; no account is taken of the fact that therein lies 
a life condition of this very culture. It means that we 
live at a period of changes and that the future does not 
open quite clearly before the peoples. Many people are 
troubled about the future; they are attached to the old 


customs, in every transformation they see the death of 
the society of which they are a part, and as conservatives 
opposed to this transformation they deeply hate what- 
ever is likely to bring a modification, everything that is 
different from them, 1. e., the strange. 

To these nationalist egoists, to these exclusivists, the 
oe appeared a danger, because they felt that the Jews 

vere still a people, a people whose mentality did not 
agree with the national mentality, whose concepts were 
opposed to that ensemble of social, moral, psychological, 
and intellectual conceptions, which constitutes nation- 
ality. For this reason the exclusivists became antisem- 
ites, because they could reproach the Jews with an ex- 
clusivism exactly as uncompromising as theirs, and 
every antisemitic effort tends, as we have seen already,’ 
to restore those ancient laws restricting the rights of the 
Jews who are considered strangers. Thus is realized this 
fundamental and everlasting contradiction of national- 
ist antisemitism: antisemitism was born in modern so- 
cieties, because the Jew did not assimilate himself, did 
not cease to be a people, but when antisemitism had as- 
certained that the Jew was not assimilated, it violently 
reproached him for it, and at the same whenever pos- 
sible it took all necessary measures to prevent his assim- 
‘ilation in the future. 

At all events, there exist contrary, opposing tendencies 
by the side of these nationalist tendencies. Above na- 
tionalities there is mankind; now, this mankind, so 
fragmental at the start, composed of thousands of in- 
imical tribes that were devouring one another, is be- 


OD ix 





— 23 — 


coming a very homogeneous mankind. The different 
peoples possess a common ground, despite their differ- 
ences; a general conscience is formed above all the 
national consciences; formerly there had been civiliza- 
tions, now we advance towards one civilization; once 
upon a time Athens resisted its neighbor Sparta; from 
now on, even if dissimilarities between one nation and 
another persist, the similarities are accentuated. As 
by the side of his special qualities constituting his es- 
sence and personality, each individual in a nation pos- 
sesses qualities in common with those who speak the 
same tongue and have the same interests as he, just so 
civilized mankind acquires similar characteristics, 
though each nation preserves its physiognomy. More 
frequent from day to day, the relations among the peo- 
- ples bring on a more intimate communion. Science, art, 
literature, become more and more cosmopolitan. Hu- 
manitarianism takes its place by the side of patriotism, 
internationalism by the side of nationalism, and pres- 
ently the idea of mankind will acquire more force than 
the idea of fatherland, which is being modified and is 
losing some of that exclusivism which the national 
egoists wish to perpetuate. Hence the antagonism be- 
tween the two tendencies. To internationalism, which 
is already so powerful, patriotism is opposed with un- 
heard of violence. The old conservative spirit is elated ; 
it is in training against cosmopolitanism which will 
some day defeat it; it fiercely fights those who are in 
favor of cosmopolitanism, and this is again a cause of 
antisemitism. 

Though often exceedingly chauvinist, the Jews are 


— 24 — 


essentially cosmopolitan in character; they are the cos- 
mopolitan element of mankind, says Schaeffle. This is 
quite true, since they have always possessed in a high 
degree that mark of cosmopolitanism—the extreme 
facility of adaptation. On their arrival into the Prom- 
ised Land they adopted the language of Canaan; after 
a seventy year sojourn in Babylonia, they forgot Hebrew 
and re-entered Jerusalem, speaking an Aramaic or Chal- 
dee jargon ; during the first century before and after the 
Christian era, the Hellenic tongue pervaded the Jewries. 
Once dispersed the Jews fatally became cosmopolites. 
Indeed they did not again attach themselves to any ter- 
ritorial unit, and have had only a religious unity. True, 
they have had a fatherland, but this fatherland, the 
most beautiful of all, as, however, every fatherland is, 
was placed in the future, it was Zion renewed, with 
which no land is compared or camparable; a spiritual 
fatherland which they loved so ardently that they be- 
came indifferent to every land, and that every land 
seemed to them equally good or equally bad. Finally 
they lived under such and so terrible circumstances that 
they could not be expected to have a fatherland of their 
choice, and, with the aid of their instinct of solidarity, 
they have remained internationalists. 

The nationalists have been led to consider them as the 
most active propagators of the ideas of internationalism ; 
they even found that the example alone of these country- 
less laymen was bad, and that by their presence they un- 
dermined the idea of fatherland, that is any special idea 
of fatherland. For this reason they became antisemites 
or rather for this reason their antisemitism took on 


— 285 —. 


added force. They not only accused the Jews of being 
strangers, but even destructive strangers. The conser- 
vatism of the exclusivists connected cosmopolitanism 
with revolution; it upbraided the Jews first for their 
cosmopolitanism, and then for their revolutionary spirit 
and activity. Has the Jew, indeed, any leaning toward 
revolution? We shall examine that. 


CHAPTER XII. 
THE REVOLUTIONARY SPIRIT IN JUDAISM. 


Communism and Revolution.—The Jewish Agitation.— 
The Optimism and Eudaemonism of Israel_—The 
Theories of Life and Death—Immortality of the 
Soul and Resignation.—Materialism and Hatred of 
Injustice—The Contract Idea in Jewish Theology. 
—The Idea of Justice—The Prophets and Justice. 
—The Return from Babylon, the Ebionim and the 
Anavim.—The Conception of Divinity.—Divine 
Authority and Government on Earth.—The Zealots 
and Anarchism.—Human Equality—The Rich 
Man and Evil.—The Poor Man and Good.—Yah- 
wehism and Liberty—Free Will, Human Reason 
and Divine Power.—Jewish Individualism.—Jew- 
ish Subjectivity and the Feeling of Self.—Hebraic 
Idealism.—The Idea of Justice, the Idea of Equal- 
ity, the Idea of Liberty, and Their Possible Re- 
alization.—Messianic Times.—The Messiah and 
Revolution.—The Revolutionary Instinct and Tal- 
mudism.—The Modern Jews and Revolution. 


— 26 — 


To inquire into the revolutionary tendencies of Ju- 
daism does not mean to examine Jewish Communism. 
Moreover, from the fact that the so-called Mosaic insti- 
tutions had been inspired by socialistic principles it 
should not necessarily be inferred that the revolutionary 
spirit has always guided Israel. | 

Communism and revolution are not inseparable terms, 
and if nowadays we cannot utter the first word without 
fatally evoking the other,—this is due to the economic 
conditions governing us and to the fact that 
’ the transformation of the present-day societies, based 
as they are on individual property, is considered impos- 
sible without a violent tearing up. In a capitalistic State 
the communist is looked upon as a revolutionist, but it 
is not taken into account that a partisan of private 
capital would be treated in similar fashion in.a commun- 
istic State. In the one and the other case this concep- 
tion would be correct, for communist or individualist 
would in turn display both discontent and desire for 
change, and that is the characteristic of the revolution- 
ary spirit. 

If it can be said, with Renan, of the Jews that they 
have been an element of progress or at least of transfor- 
mation, if they could be regarded as the ferments of 
revolution, and that, too, at all times, we shall see, it 
is not because of these laws on gleaning, on the 
workmen’s wages, on the sabbatic and jubilee years, 
which are found in the Exodus, Numbers, Leviticus, 
ets.,' but because they have always been malcontents. 

I do not mean to claim thereby that they were mere 





1 Leviticus, xix, xxv; Exodus, xxii; Numbers, xxv. 


= 277 


mudslingers and systematic opponents of all govern- 
ment, for they were not wrought up against an Ahab or 
Ahaziah only,—but the state of things did not satisfy 
them ; they were forever restless, in the expectation of a 
better state which they never found realized. Their 
ideal not being one of those which are satisfied with 
hope—they had not placed it high enough for that— 
they never could lull their ambitions with dreams and 
phantoms. They thought they had a right to demand 
immediate satisfactions and not remote promises. Hence 
_ this constant agitation of the Jews, which had mani- 
fested itself not only in prophetism, Messianism and 
Christianity that was its supreme consummation, but 
as well since the time of the dispersion, and then in an 
individual manner. 

The causes that gave birth to this agitation, which — 
kept it up and perpetuated it in the souls of some mod- 
ern Jews, are not external causes such as the tyranny 
of a ruler, of a people or ferocious code; they are 
internal causes, 7. e., such as pertain to the very essence 
of the Hebrew spirit. The reasons of the sentiments of 
revolt with which the Jews were animated. must be 
sought in the idea they had of God, in their conception 
of life and.death. 

_ To Israel, life is a boon, the existence granted to man 
by God is good; to live is in itself good luck. When, in 
a strait moment, the Ecclesiastes! declared that the day 
of death was preferable to that of birth, he was troubled 
by Hellenic thought, and his aphorism had but an in- 
dividual value. According to the Hebrew, life must 


* Kecles. vii, 1. | 





give a being all the joys and only from it they must be 
expected. 

By contrast, death is the only evil that can afflict man, 
it is the greatest of calamities; it is so horrible, so 
frightful that to be struck by it is the most terrible of 
punishments. “May death serve me as expiation,” the 
dying would say, for he could not conceive of a more 
serious punishment than that consisting in death. The 
only recompense that the pious earnestly desired was that 
Yahweh might make them die sated with days, after 
years passed in abundance and jubilation. . 

Besides, what recompense other than this could they 
have expected? They did not believe in the future life, 
and it was late, perhaps only under the influence of 
Parsism, that they began to admire the immortality of 
the soul. “For a Jew, his existence ended with life, he 
was sleeping till the day of resurrection, he had nothing 
to hope for except from existence, and the punishments 
that threatened vice, just as the satisfactions that accom- 
panied virtue, were all of this world. 

The philosophy of the Jew, or more properly speaking, 
his eudaemonism, was simple; he says with the Ecclesias- 
tes. “I have found out that there is happiness in rejoicing 
enly and in giving one’s self comforts during life.”* A 
realist, therefore, he sought to develop himself to the 
best of his desires; having but a limited number of years 
allotted to him, he wanted to enjoy it, and he demanded 
not moral pleasures, but material pleasures, suitable to 
embellish, to make comfortable the existence. As there 
was no paradise, he could expect only tangible favors 





2 Eccles. iii, 12. 


ee 


from God, in return for his fidelity, his piety; not vague 
promises, good for those seeking beyond, but formal 
realizations, resulting in an increase of fortune, an 
augmentation of well-being. If the Jew saw himself 
defrauded of the advantages he thought were due his at- 
tachment, his soul was profoundly disturbed; with Job 
he preferred to believe he had sinned unknowingly, and 
that having made. him expiate his errors by poverty 
Yahweh would treat him like that very Job to whom 
was granted “the double of whatever he had possessed.”? 


Having no hope of future reward the Jew could not 
resign to the misfortunes of life; it was only at a very 
late date that he could console himself in his misfortunes 
by dreaming of celestial happiness. To the scourges 
befalling him he replied neither with the Moham- 
medan’s fatalism, nor with the Christian’s resignation, 
but with revolt. As he possessed a concrete ideal, he 
wanted to realize it, and whatever retarded its advent 
aroused his wrath. 


The peoples that believed in a world beyond, those 
who deluded themselves with sweet and consoling 
chimaeras and let themselves be lulled to sleep with the 
dream of eternity; those that possessed the dogma of 
rewards and punishments, of paradise and hell, all these 
peoples accepted poverty and sickness with bowed heads. 
The dream of future rejoicing kept them up, and with- 
out anger they put up with their sores and their priva- 
tion. They consoled themselves of the injustices of 
this world by thinking of the mirth that would be their 





? Job, xlii, 10, 


— 280 — 


dise pleasures, they consented to bend, without com- 
plaint, before the strong who tyrannized them. 

“The hatred of injustice is strikingly diminished 
through the assurance of rewards beyond the grave,” 
says Ernest Renan. Indeed, to him who believes in the 
life eternal during which immutable and sovereign jus- 
tice shall reign, of what import are these short earthly 
iniquities from which death gives release? The faith 
in the immortality of the soul is a counselor of resig- 
lot in the other world; in the expectation of the para- 
nation ; this is so true, that the uncompromising attitude 
of the Jew subsides as the belief in eternity grows 
stronger in Israel. 

But this idea of the continuity and persistence of the 
personality contributed nothing to the formation of the 
moral being with the Jews. In earliest times they did 
not share the hopes of the later Pharisees ; after Yahweh 
had closed their eyelids, they expected only the horror of 
Sheol. Accordingly, life was for them the important 
thing; they sought to beautify it with all blessings, and 
these mad idealists, who had conceived the pure idea of 
one God, were, by a startling yet explicable contrast, the 
. most untractable of sensualists. Yahweh had assigned 
to them a certain number of years on earth; in this ex- 
istence, always too short to suit the Hebrew, He de- 
manded of them a faithful and scrupulous worship: in 
return, the Hebrew claimed positive advantages from his 
Lord. 

The idea of contract dominated the whole of Jewish 
theology. When the Israelite fulfilled his duties toward 
Yahweh, he demanded reciprocity. If he thought himself . 


— R21 — 


wronged, if he considered his rights had not been re- 
spected, he had no good reason to temporize, for the 
minute of happiness he lost was a minute stolen from 
him, one which could never be returned to him. Ac- 
cordingly, he looked to a punctual fulfilment of mutual 
obligations; he wanted a correct balance to exist be- 
tween his God and himself; he kept a strict account of 
his duties and his rights, this account was part of the 
religion, and Spinoza could justly say :? “With the Jews 
the religious dogmas did not consist in instructions, but 
in rights and prescriptions; piety meant justice, im- 
piety meant injustice and crime.” 

The man whom the Jew lauds is not a saint, not a 
resignee: it is the just man. The charitable man does 
not exist for those of Judah’s people; in Israel there 
can be no question of charity, but only of justice: alms 
is but a restitution. Besides, what did Yahweh say? 
He has said: “Just balances, just weights, a just ephah, 
and a just hin shall ye have;”? he has also said: “Thou 
shalt not respect the person of the poor, nor honor the 
person of the mighty; but in righteousness shalt thou 
judge thy neighbor.” 

From this conception of the primitive times of Israel 
came the law of retaliation. Simple spirits, imbued 
with the idea of justice, were obviously bound to come 
to: “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.” The rigor of 
the code softened only then when a more exact idea of 
equity was obtained. 





1Tract. Theolog. Polit., chap. xvii. 
*Wevit.;.21X,020 
1 Levit., xix, 36. 


— 282 — 


The Yahwehism of the prophets reflects these senti- 
ments. What the God they praise wants is: “Let judg- 
ment run down as waters and righteousness as a mighty 
stream ;”> he says: “I am the Lord which exercise lov- 
ingkindness, judgment and righteousness in the earth; 
for in these things I delight.”* To know justice is to 
know God,! and justice becomes an emanation from 
divinity ; it takes on the character of a revelation. With 
Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel it formed part of the dogma, it 
had been proclaimed during the Sinaitic theophanies, 
and little by little is born this idea: Israel must realize 
justice. 

This desire guides all great prophets before and during 
the captivity. Should the elect people not practice jus- 
tice it will be punished for it as for its idolatry. If it 
is led into captivity it is not simply because it had wor- 
shipped Ashera and Kamosh, had sacrificed on high 
places, had disgraced the sanctuary, but as well because 
it is rotten with iniquity. 

All prophetic schools were imbued with these thoughts. 
The prophets believed themselves sent to work for the 
advent of justice. Obviously, what struck them most 
was the inequality in conditions. As long as there 
would be poor and rich, there would be no hope for the 
reign of equity. According to the inspired nabis (proph- 
ets) the rich were a hindrance to justice and this latter 
was to be brought about only by the poor. Accordingly 
the anavim and ebionim (the afflicted and the poor) 





> Amos, v, 24. 
* Jeremiah, ix, 24. 
+ Jeremiah, xxii, 15-16. 


— 283 — 


gathered around their protectors, the prophets. With 
them they protested against the extortions ; in return, the 
prophets presented them as models, and from them 
drew the portrait of the just man: “The just is he that 
walketh righteously and speaketh uprightly; he that 
despiseth the gain of oppressions, that shaketh his hand 
from holding of bribes, that stoppeth his ears from hear- 
ing of blood, and shutteth his eyes from seeing evil.’”? 
They pointed out their duties to the rich and said in the 
name of Yahweh: “Is not this the fast I have chosen? 
to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy bur- 
dens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break 
every yoke? Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, 
and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy 
house ?”” 


On returning from Babylon, the Jewish population 
formed a considerable nucleus of poor, just, pious, 
humble, and saints. A great portion of the Psalms came 
from this midst. These Psalms are for the most part 
violent diatribes against the rich; they symbolize the 
struggle of the ebionim against the mighty. When ad- 
dressing the possessors, the sated, the Psalmists readily 
say with Amos: “Hear this, O ye that swallow up the 
needy, even to make the poor of the land to fail,”’* and 
in all these poems written between the Babylonian exile 
and the Maccabees (589-167) the poor is glorified. He 
is God’s friend, His prophet, His anointed; he is good, 





‘Isaiah, xxxiii, 15. 
* Isaiah, lviii, 6-7. 
* Amos, viii, 4. 


— R84 — 


his hands are pure; he is upright and just; he is part of 
the flock of which God is the shepherd. 

The rich is the wicked, he is the man of violence and 
blood; he is knavish, perfidious, haughty; he does evil 
without motive; he is contemptible, for he exploits, dp- 
presses, persecutes and devours the poor. But his great 
crime is that he does not do justice; that he has bribed 
judges who condemn the poor beforehand.* 

Incited by the words of their poets, the ebionim did 
not slumber in their misery, they did not delight in their 
misfortunes, they did not resign to poverty. On the con- 
trary, they dreamed of the day that would avenge the 
iniquities and ‘oprobriums heaped upon them, the day 
when the wicked would be hurled down and the just 
exalted: the day of the Messiah. For all these humble 
ones the Messianic era was to be an era of justice. Did 
not Isaiah speak of this time when he said: “I will also 
make thy officers peace, and thine exactors righteousness. 
Violence shall no more be heard in thy land. And they 
shall build houses, and inhabit them; and they shall 
plant vineyards, and eat the fruit of them. They shall 
not build, and another inhabit; they shall not plant and 
another eat.” 

When Jesus comes he will repeat what the ebionim 
Psalmists had said, he will say: “Blessed are they which 
do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall 
be filled ;”* he will anathematize the rich, and will ex- 
claim: “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye 





+ Psalms, xxvi, 10; Ixxxil, 2-3; xxii; xlvill: xlix; cil; 1,2: 
evii, etc. 
® Matth., v, 6. 


— 285 — 


of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of 
God.”? On this point the Christian doctrine will turn 
out to be purely Jewish, not at all Hellenic, and Jesus 
will find his first adherents among the ebionim. 

Thus the conception the Jews formed of life and death 
furnished the first element of their revolutionary spirit. 
Starting with the idea that good, that is justice, was to 
be realized not beyond the grave—for beyond the grave 
there is sleep, until the day of the resurrection of the 
dead,—but during life, they sought justice, and never 
finding it, ever dissatisfied, they were restless to get it. 

The second element was given them by their concep- 
tion of divinity. It led them to conceive the equality of 
men, it led them even to anarchy; a theoretic and senti- 
mental anarchy, since they always had a government, but 
a real anarchy, for they never accepted with cheerful 
heart this government, whatever it were. 

Whether worshipping Yahweh as their national God, 
or when they rose with their prophets to the belief in one 
and universal God, the Jews never speculated over the 
essence of Divinity. Judaism never set for itself any 
essential metaphysical questions, whether about the “be- 
yond” or the nature of God. “Sublime speculations 
have no connection with the Scripture,” says Spinoza, 
“and, as far as I am concerned, I have not and could not 
learn, from the Holy Writ, any of the eternal attributes 
of God” ;? and Mendelssohn adds: “Judaism has not re- 
vealed unto us any of the eternal truths.’ 





1 Mark, x, 25. 
* Spinoza, Letters, xxxiv. 
* Mendelssohn, Jerusalem. 


— 286 — 


The Jews looked upon Yahweh as a cexestial monarch, 
who would give a charter to his people and enter into 
engagements with it, demanding, in return, obedience to 
his laws and prescriptions. In the eyes of the ancient 
Hebrews and, later on, the Talmudists, the Bene-Israel 
alone could enjoy the prerogatives granted by Yah- 
weh ; in the eyes of the prophets, all nations could law- 
fully claim these privileges, because Yahweh was the God 
Universal, and not the equal of Dagon or Beelzebub. 


But Yahweh was “the supreme head of the Hebrew 
people” ;? He was the all-powerful and formidable lord, 
the only king, jealous of His authority, cruelly punish- 
ing those who showed themselves rebellious against His 
omnipotence. In good luck, as in ill-luck, a pious Jew 
had ever to have recourse to Him. To turn to men and 
not to God Yahweh was a crime, and having made an 
alliance with Rome and Mithridates I., Judas Macca- 
baeus incurred this anathema of Rabbi José, son of Jo- 
hanan: “Accursed be he who places his reliance in crea- 
tures of flesh and who removes his heart from Yahweh!” 
Yahweh is thy fort, thy shield, thy citadel, thy hope, say 
the Psalms. 


All Jews are Yahweh’s subjects; He has said it Him- 
self: “For unto me the children of Israel are servants.”* 
What authority can, then, prevail by the side of the 
divine authority? All government, whatever it be, is 
evil, since it tends to take the place of the government of 
God; it must be fought against, because Yahweh is the 





* Munk, Palestine. 
1 Levit., xxv, 55. 


eS aay ven 


only head of the Jewish commonwealth, the only one to 
whom the Israelite owes obedience. 

When insulting the Kings, the prophets represented 
the sentiment of Israel. They were giving expression to 
the thoughts of the poor, the humble, all those who, being 
directly ill-used by the power of the Kings or of the rich, 
were more inclined, for that very reason, to criticize or 
deny the good coming from this tyranny. 

Holding Yahweh alone as their lord, these anavim and 
ebionim, were ever driven to revolt against human 
magistracy ; they could not accept it, and during the per- 
iods of uprising Zadok and Judah the Galilean were seen 
carrying with them the zealots by their cry: “Call none 
vour master!” Zadok and Judah were logical: if we 
place our tyrant in heavens we cannot endure one down 
here. 

No authority being compatible with Yahweh’s, it fa- 
tally followed that no man could rise above the others; 
the merciless lord of heavens brought equality on earth, 
and already primitive Mosaism had in it this social 
equality. Before God all men are equal; they are equal 
before the law, since the law is a divine emanation, and 
the unfortunate have the right, in speaking of the rich, 
to say to Nehemiah: “Our flesh is as the flesh of our 
brethren ; our children as their children.” ? 

God himself commands this equality, and again the 
mighty are the obstacle to its realization. The humble, 
who live in common, practice it; they follow the commu- 
nistic precepts of Leviticus, Exodus, Numbers, precepts 
inspired by preoccupations with equality. As for the 
rich, they forget that God had made all men from the 


— 288 — 


same clay, they disown the equality proclaimed by God. 
Thus they oppress the people, they fill their houses with 
the spoils of the poor, they browse his vineyard, they 
make of widows their prey, of orphans their booty,” and 
owing to them inequality exists. 

At them, at these possessors and these grandees the 
prophets hurl the anathema; the psalmists thunder: “O 
Lord God, to whom vengeance belongeth; O God, to 
whom vengeance belongeth, show thyself!’% they cry. 
They rebuke the rich for the abundance of his treasures, 
his luxury, his love of pleasures; whatever contributes to 
raise him materially above his brethren; whatever can 
give him the impious arrogance of deeming himself made 
of other dust than that of which is made the mountain- 
shepherd who pastures his sheep and fears God; what- 
ever makes him forget this divine truth; men are equal 
to one another, since they are the children of Yahweh 
who pretended giving each of his subjects an equal share 
of the earth they tread on, an equal share of joys and 
blessings. 

The Israelite’s hatred toward the rich abettor of in- 
justice was tangled up with the hatred toward the rich 
denier of the prescriptions of equality. As he could not 
attribute divine origin to riches, as he could not believe 
that Yahweh distributed it, thus breaking the pact which 
bound him with his nation, the Hebrew decreed that all 
wealth came from evil, from sin; he said that all prop- 
erty was ill acquired. To make his ideas of justice and 





1 Nehemiah, v, 5. 
2 Isaiah, iii, 14; x, 2. 
* Psalms, xciv, 1. 


— 289 — 


equity agree with reality, which showed him David tak- 
ing Uri’s wife and Ahab despoiling Naboth, he was de- 
claring that the prosperity of the wicked was a pure 
phantom, that it lasted little; that, sooner or later, the 
formidable Sabaoth stretched his right hand upon those 
who violated his law, and made them return to naught. 

Yet the poor, the anavim, did not see their wishes 
being accomplished; before them, ever defying their 
misery, the rich were making a display of themselves. 
They would then attribute to their own sins the distress 
with which they were afflicted; they would carry their 
hopes forward to the time of Messiah, when all men 
would be judged with equity, when all would be equal, 
all free, for they possessed the love of liberty. 

This passion contributed also to the formation of the 
revolutionary spirit of the Jews, and speaking of liberty 
I do not mean political liberty. The idea of political 
liberty was born in Israel particularly at the time of the 
Antiochi and during the Roman sway, when Epiphanes 
or Sidetes, Aulus Gabinius, or the other proconsuls, fo- 
mented religious persecutions, thus provoking the great 
nationalist movements of the Zealots and Assassins. 

But if the conception of political liberty was tardy, 
that of individual liberty ever existed among the Jews, 
for it was an inevitable corollary of their dogma of divin- 
ity, it proceeded from their theory of man’s creation. 

According to this theory, all power belonged to God, 
and the Jew could be ruled by Yahweh only. He gave 
account of his deeds to Adonai alone, who rules the heay- 
ens and earth; none of his fellow-creatures had a right 
to restrain his activity or to impose his will upon him; 


— 290 — 


with regard to creatures of flesh he was free and was to 
be free. This conviction incapacited the Hebrew for dis- 
cipline and subordination, it led him to reject all shac- 
kles with which the kings or patricians would have 
wished to bind him, and the princes of Judaea ever held 
sway over a people of rebels, incapable of submitting to 
any yoke or coercion. 

One might believe that so thinking the Jews abdicated 
liberty into the hands of the Lord whom they recognized ; 
nothing of the kind, and they have never been fatalists 
like the Mohammedans. Over against Yahweh they 
claimed their free will, and without caring for the con- 
tradiction they stood up erect in the face of Him to assert 
the reality, the inviolability of their self, while they 
bowed to the whims of their Lord. 

Were they not created after the image of God, and 
was not their nature partaking of this God? Just be- 
cause they were fashioned after their Creator, their 
human brethren must not commit the sacrilege of op- 
pressing them; but Yahweh, who had given men the 
gift of intelligence, was not at liberty to prevent them 
from directing this intelligence according to their will. 
The story of the dispute between Rabbi Eliezer and the 
rabbis, his colleagues, gives us a sufficiently typical sam- 
ple, and is worth quoting. 

In the course of a doctrinal discussion, the divine voice 
was heard and, breaking in upon the debate, gave right 
to Rabbi Eliezer. The colleagues of the favored man did 
not accept the decision of heaven; Rabbi Joshua, one 
from among them, arose and declared: “Not mysterious 
voices, but the majority of sages must hereafter decide 


— 291 — 


questions of doctrine. Reason is no longer hidden in 
heaven, the Law is no longer in the heavens; it has been 
granted on earth, and it is the task of human reason to 
comprehend and explain it.”? 

If the divine words met with such a reception when 
they allowed themselves to force individuals and to wish 
to impose upon man’s reason a will foreign to his own 
will, how were man’s words received? Renan was right 
when saying of the Semites: “There is nothing, there- 
fore, in these souls to resist the uncontrollable feeling of 
self,”? and this was more particularly true of the Jews. 

After Yahweh they believed in self only. To the 
unity of God there corresponded the unity of being; to 
God absolute—absolute being. Accordingly, subjectivity 
has ever been the fundamental trait of the Semitic char- 
acter; it has often led the Jews to egoism, and having 
once exaggerated this egoism, certain Talmudists ended 
with recognizing, in the matter of duties, nothing but 
duties to one’s self. This subjectivity, as much as mono- 
theism, accounts for the incapacity shown by the Jews 
in all plastic arts. As for their literature it was purely 
subjective; the Jewish prophets, like the psalmists, like 
the poets of Job and the Song of Songs, like the moralists 
of the Ecclesiastes and the Book of Wisdom, knew only 
themselves and generalized their feelings or their per- 
sonal sensations. This subjectivity also allows to under- 
stand why the Jews have at all times, even in our days, 
shown so much aptness for music—that most subjective 
of all arts. 





*Talmud, Baba Mezia, 59a. 
* Ernest Renan, Histoire gencrale des langues semitiques. 


— 292 — 


Thus they were undeniably individualists, and these 
men, so eager to pursue earthly interests, appear to us,— 
thanks to their uncompromising conception of existence, 
—as untractable idealists. Now, an individualist imbued 
with idealism is and will always be in revolt. He will 
never want to allow anybody to violate his sacred self, 
and no will will be able to prevail over his. 

We have separated all the elements of which was 
formed the revolutionary spirit in Judaism; they are: 
the idea of justice, of equality and of liberty. Still, if 
among the nations Israel was the first to preach these 
ideas, other nations upheld them at various moments of 
history, and for all that they were not revolted peoples 
like the Jewish people. Why? Because, though con- 
vinced of the excellence of justice, equality and liberty, 
these people did not hold their complete realization as 
possible, in this world at least, and therefore they did not 
work solely for their advent. 

The Jews, on the contrary, not only believed that jus- 
tice, liberty and equality could be the sovereigns of the 
world, but they thought themselves specially intrusted 
with the mission of working for this reign.. All the de- 
sires, all the hopes these three ideas gave birth to ended 
by crystallizing around one central idea: that of the Mes- 
sianic times, of the coming of Messiah, who was to be 
sent by Yahweh to establish the power of these queens of 
the earth. 

The prophets kept up Israel in this dream of an era 
of happiness and prosperity, and the Psalms of the pe- 
riod after the exile further contributed toward increasing 
the belief in a blessed epoch when the wicked shall be no 


— 293 — 


more, when “the meek shall inherit the earth; and shall 
delight themselves in the abundance of peace.”* From 
the return from Babylon up to the very agony of the 
Jewish nation, this Messianic dream lulled the Jews. 
The tyranny of Antiochus, the Roman oppression, ren- 
dered these hopes but more indispensable to the Jews. 
They consoled themselves of their trials by dreaming of 
the day of their deliverance ; the liberator’s image formed 
little by little before them, and it was all alive in the 
soul of those who heard the voice of John the Baptist ex- 
claim: “The Kingdom of Heavens is to come!” in the 
heart of those who went after Jesus. 

Quite a literature was born of these hopes which so 
many men played false with during the first century be- 
fore and after the Christian era; but here I can mention 
but The Book of Daniel, The Psalms of Solomon, The 
Assumption of Moses, The Book of Enoch, The Fourth 
Book of Ezra, the Sibylline Oracles; it is impossible for 
me to analyze these revelations and oracles. Nearly all 
of them foretell the hour which will witness the Messi- 
anic times open; they describe the signs that will an- 
nounce the Messiah. They also agree in saying that 
this moment will bring the death of evil, and the Sibyl 
sums them all up when soothsaying: “From the starry 
heavens Messiah will descend to men, and with him holy 
concord, faith, love, hospitality. He will drive iniquity, 
reprehension, envy, anger, folly, from this world. No 
more poverty, murders, evil wranglings, dark quarrels, 
nocturnal thieveries. No more of that which is perverse. 

The pious men will live happily in cities and 
~ ? Psalms, xxxvii, 11. 





— 294 — 


rich estates.”! The earth will be delivered of injustice, 
inequality will be known no longer and all men will be 
free. 

Israel did not want to trust any one of those who rep- 
resented themselves as the Messiah. He rejected all 
those who said they had been sent from God; he has re- 
fused to hear Jesus, Bar-Cochba, Theudas, David Alroy, 
Serene, Moses of Crete, Sabbatai-Zevi. It means that 
Israel never saw his ideal become real. None of the 
prophets that came to him has brought the divine justice, 
triumphant equality or indestructible liberty in the folds 
of his robe; at the voice of these anointed the Jews did 
not see chains fall, prison-walls crumble, the rod of au- 
thority rot, the ill-gotten treasures of the rich and de- 
spoilers scatter like empty smoke. 

Notwithstanding their long bondage, despite the years 
of martyrdom which have been their lot, in spite of the 
centuries of humiliation, which have debased their 
character, depressed their brains, cramped their intelli- 
gence, changed their tastes, their customs, their apti- 
tudes, the debris of Judah have not abjured their so 
vivid dream, which had been their support and inspira- 
tion during the wars for independence. 

The funeral-piles, massacres, spoliations, insults, 
everything contributed to make dearer to them the jus- 
tice, the equality and the liberty which during many 
long years were for them the emptiest words. The great 
voice of the prophets proclaiming that the wicked will 
be punished one day has always found an echo in these 
tenacous souls that did not like to bend, and despised 


1 Sibyllino Oracles, iii, 573, 585. 





— 295 — 


this so miserable reality in order to delude themselves 
with the idea of the future time; that future time, of 
which Amos and Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel, and all 
those have spoken who sang Mizmorim (psalms), to 
their own accompaniment on stringed instruments. 
However gloomy the present, Israel never ceased to be- 
lieve in the future. 

The Jews were told: “Why do you await Messiah ; 
obdurate, know ye not that he has come?” ‘They ans- 
wered with sarcasm, they shrugged their shoulders and 
replied: “The Messiah has not come, for we are suffer- 
ing, for famine desolates the land, for the black pest 
and the nobleman burden the sorrowful wretches!” 
But when they would be told that their Meshiach would 
never come, they would lift up their bowed down heads 
and, stubborn that they were, would say: ‘Meshiach 
will come one day and on that day will be understood 
the word of the Psalmist: ‘I have seen the wicked in 
great power and spreading himself like a green bay 
tree. Yet he passed away and lo! he was not; yea, I 
sought him, but he could not be found’* and the poor, 
the just are those who will possess the earth.” 

The narrow practices into which their doctors had 
pressed the Jews, have put to slumber their instincts of 
revolt. Under the bonds of the Talmudic laws, they 
felt tottering in them the ideas that had ever sustained 
them, and it could be said that Israel could be van- 
quished only by himself. Still the Talmud did not de- 
base all Jews; among those who rejected it there were 
some who persisted in the belief that justice, liberty and 


* Psalms, xxxvii, 35-36. 





— 296 — 


equality were to come to this world; there were many of 
them who believed that the people of Yahweh was 
charged with working for this coming. This makes it 
plain why the Jews were implicated in all revolutionary 
movements, for they took an active part in all revolu- 
tions, as we shall see when we study their role during all 
periods of trouble and change. 

It remains now to know how the Jew has manifested 
these revolutionary tendencies, whether he was actually 
(as he is accused) an element of disturbance in modern 
societies ; and thus we are led to examine the religious, 
political and economic causes of antisemitism. 





2It would require a long study to show the role of the Jews 
in the revolutions. We hope to undertake this study, and we 
shall bring together, at present, only its elements; it will form 
part of a book in which we intend to take up again ihis whole 
chapter as well as a part of the following chapter; there we 
shall make a more detailed criticism of the ideas which we have 
expressed, and we shall examine whether the Jews at all times 
or at least some among the Jews at all times had not attempted 
to realize these ideas. 


— 27 — 


CHAPTER XIII. 


THE JEW AS A FACTOR IN THE TRANSFORMATION OF SOCI- 
ETY.—POLITICAL AND RELIGIOUS CAUSES OF 


ANTISEMITISM. 


The Jew as a Revolutionist—The Jews of the Middle 
Ages and the Spirit of Skepticism.—Jewish Ration- 
alism and Christianity——The Jews and Secret Soci- 
eties.—The Role Played by the Jews in the French 
Revolution and in the Upheavals of the Nineteenth 
Century.—The Jews and Socialism.—Political, So- 
cial and Religious Changes at Work in Present-day 
Society.—The Grievances of the Conservative Ele- 
ments and Antisemitism.—The Jew as a Menace 
to Public Order and a Solvent of Society.—The 
Judaization of Christian Nations and the Decay of 
Faith.—Is the Jew Still anti-Christian ?—The Per- 
sistence of anti-Jewish Prejudices.—Ritual Murder. 
—The Jews and the Talmud.—The Synagogue and 
the Spirit of Religious Indifferentism Among the 
Jews.—The Emancipated Jew.—Liberalism, Anti- 
clericalism and the Jews.—Judaism and the Chris- 
tian State—The Modern Struggle—The Spirit of 
Conservatism versus the Spirit of Revolution.— 
Tradition and Change.—Antisemitism in an Age of 
Transition. —The Jew in Society. — 


— 298 — 


Thus it would seem as if the grievance of the anti- 
semite were well founded ; the Jewish spirit is essentially 
a revolutionary spirit, and consciously or otherwise, the 
Jew is a revolutionist. Not content, however, with this, 
antisemitism would have it that the Jews are the very 
cause of revolution. Let us see what truth there is in 
the charge. 

Taking him as he was, the tendencies of his nature and 
the direction of his sympathies made it inevitable that 
the Jew should play an important part in the revolu- 
tions of history; and such a part he has not failed to 
play. Nevertheless it would be too much to say, with the . 
great mass of Israel’s enemies, that every public commo- 
tion, every uprising, every political overturning has 
originated with the Jews, or has been provoked or occa- 
sioned by the Jews, and that governments change and 
take on new forms because the Jew in his secret counsels 
has plotted such changes and transformations. In main- 
taining such a proposition we violate the simplest of his- 
torical laws, by assigning to a minute cause a totally dis- 
proportionate effect, and concentrating our attention 
upon one phase of historical development to the exclu- 
sion of a thousand others of its manifold aspects. Had 
the Jews perished to a man behind the walls of Zion, the 
destiny of nations would not have been changed, and 
though the Jewish element were wanting to this won- 
drous totality which we call progress, society would have 
developed notwithstanding. Other forces would have 
taken the place of the Jews and accomplished what the 
Jews have accomplished in the general scheme. Given 
the Bible and Christianity, the intellectual and moral 


— 299 — 


mission of the Jew would have been carried out without 
him. The Jew, therefore, is not the animating force of! 
the world, nor our sole guide to a newer life. At the 
same time, those who, in an excess of caution, would rep- 
resent the Jew as exercising no influence at all in his- 
torical evolution, or, going further still, assert that the 
Jew is essentially inimical to progress, fall into as grave 
an error as do the antisemites. 

The Jew, it is said, is non-progressive; it is necessary 
to see in what sense and after what fashion this is true. 
The Jew is non-progressive in so far as regards himself, 
in clinging tenaciously to his traditions, his modes of 
worship and his customs. So loath is he to abandon the 
old that stagnation has resulted, and we may study the 
life of the Middle Ages in the Jewries of Galicia, Poland 
and Russia. But in reality it is not so much Judaism 
which is non-progressive as Talmudism. We have just 
seen that it is the Talmud alone that can subdue the Jew 
and tame his rebellious instincts, and it is the study of 
the Talmud, obligatory and exclusive, that has prevented 
the Jew from drinking at the real fountain-head, the 
Bible; the doctors have stifled the prophets. Still, we 
must not forget that the Talmudists were at one time 
philosophers also, and philosophers of the rationalist 
school.t In the tenth century the Rabbinites, following 
in the footsteps of the Karaites, attempted to ground re- 
ligion upon philosophy. Saadiah, gaon of Sora, main- 


*The Talmud is, as a matter of fact, permeated with the 
spirit of rationalism; witness the famous controversy between 
Rabbi Eliezer and his colleagues, in which it was maintained 
that miracles can not afford sufficient evidence of truth (Tal- 
mud, Baba Mezia, 59). 








— 300 — 


tained that side by side with the authority of Scripture 
and tradition ran the authority of reason, and he 
preached “not only the right, but the duty, of applying 
the test of reason to religious belief.”? In the eleventh 
century, Ibn Gebirol, known to the scholastics as Avice- 
bron, gave life to the Arabian philosophy by the pub- 
lication of his Fons Vitae. Of Maimonides and of his 
work I have already spoken. 

It was these rationalist thinkers and philosophers who 
from the tenth to the fifteenth century, that is, to the 
Renaissance, took an active part in what might be termed 
the universal revolution of humanity. To a certain ex- 
tent they helped Man to free himself from the bonds of 
religion; and, even if at the beginning of this period 
they were not fully conscious, perhaps, of the nature of 
the work they were performing, they accomplished their 
work nevertheless. At a time when orthodoxy and the 
Christian faith constituted the foundation of States, he 
who ventured to attack the established dogmas of faith 
or gave aid to those who assailed them, was naturally a 
revolutionist. 

Theologians who resort to reason for the defence of 
dogma, will inevitably end by asserting the superiority 
of reason to dogma, with fatal results to the latter. Ex- 
egesis and freedom of investigation are powerful destroy- 
ers, and it is the Jews who originated biblical exegesis, 
just as they were the first to criticize the forms and doc- 
trines of Christianity. Already had the Jews of Pales- 
tine assailed the doctrine of the Incarnation as implying 








7S. Munk, Melanges de philosophie juive et arabe (Paris, 
1859), p. 478. 


— 301 — 


a degradation of the divine essence, and therefore impos- 
sible, an idea which Spinoza was to take up later in his 
Tractatus theologico-poiticus. The polemic carried on 
by the Jews against the Christians was based upon this 
idea and upon what might be called positivist reasoning. 
We have an example of the latter in Origen’s Contra Cel- 
sum, for we know that Celsus had borrowed his ration- 
alist arguments from the Jews of his time. The import- 
ance of the controversial literature of the Middle Ages 
has already been shown.’ If we study closely we find 
in it all the arguments advanced by the scholars of our 
own day. It might, indeed, be maintained in denial of 
the revolutionary role said to have been played by the 
Jews, that the greater part of their exegesis was ad- 
dressed to Jews only, and that it consequently could not 
have been a means of inciting to change, inasmuch as the 
Jew knew well how to reconcile the results of textual 
eriticism with the minutiae of his practices and the in- 
tegrity of his faith. This, however, is not altogether 
true, for Jewish doctrines did find their way out of the 
synagogue, and this in two different ways. In the first 
place, the Jews could always find an opportunity for pro- 
claiming their ideals, thanks to the prevalence of public 
disputation. In the second place, they were the means of 
disseminating the Arabian philosophy, and were its ex- 
pounders at atime, twelfth century, to be precise, when 
Al Farabi and Ibn Sina were being anathematized in the 
mosques, and orthodox Mussulmans were feeding the 
fires with the writings of the Arabian Aristotelians. The 
Jews of this period translated the writings of Aris- 








2 Chapter yii. 


302 


totle and of the Arabian philosophers into Hebrew, and 
these, retranslated into Latin, afforded the scholastics an 
opportunity for becoming acquainted with Greek 
thought. The most famous of the scholastics, “men like 
Albertus Magnus and St. Thomas Aquinas, studied the 
works of Aristotle in Latin versions made from the He- 
brew.””? 

The Jews did not stop there. They preached the ma- 
terialism of the Arabian philosophers which was to prove 
so destructive to the Christian faith, and carried abroad 
the spirit of skepticism. Their activity was such as to 
give rise to a general belief in the existence of a secret 
society sworn to the destruction of Christianity.t Dur- 
ing the thirteenth century, a century which witnessed 
the rapid development of that complex of humanism, 
skepticism and paganism which we call the Renaissance, 
at a time when the Hohenstaufen defended the cause of 
science against dogma, and showed themselves the pro- 
tectors of Epicureanism, the Jews occupied the first 
place among scholars and rationalist philosophers. At 
the Court of the Emperor Frederick II, “that hotbed of 
irreligion,” they were received with favor and respect. 
It was they, as Renan has shown,” that created Averro- 
ism; it was they who established the fame of that Ibn- 
Roshd, that Averroes whose influence was destined to 
become so great.. Without doubt they had their share, 
too, in the dissemination of the “blasphemies” of the im- 





2S. Munk, loc. cit. 


1 Cf. the poetic account of the Descent of St. Paul into Hell, 
cited by Ernest Renan in his Averroes et lV’ Averraisme, p. 284, 
* BE, Renan, loc. cit. 


— 3803 — 


pious Arabians ; blasphemies which an Emperor, fond of 
science and of philosophy, encouraged. These find their 
type in the so-called “Blasphemy of the Three Impos- 
tors,” Moses, Jesus and Mahomet, invented by the theo- 
logians, and their spirit is tersely summed up in the say- 
ing of the Arabian soufis, “What care I for the Kaaba of 
the Mohammedan, the synagogue of the Jew, or the con- 
vent of the Christian!” Truly has Darmesteter writ- 
ten: “The Jew was the apostle of unbelief, and every re- 
volt of the mind originated with him, whether secretly 
or in the open. In that immense foundry of blasphemy 
maintained by the Emperor Frederick and the princes 
of Suabia and Aragon, he acted a busy part.” 

Another thing also is worthy of notice. If the Jews 
as followers of Averroes, or as unbelievers, skeptics and 
blasphemers, sapped the foundations of Christianity in 
spreading the doctrines of materialism and rationalism, 
they were also the creators of that other enemy of Catho- 
lic dogma, pantheism. In fact the Fons Vitae of Avice- 
bron was the well at which numerous heretics drank. 
It is even quite possible that David de Dinant and 
Amaury de Chartres, were influenced by the Fons Vitae 
which they knew in a Latin translation made in the 
twelfth century by the archdeacon Dominique Gundissa- 
linus. It is certain that Giordano Bruno borrowed from 
the Fons Vitae, whence his pantheism came in part." 

If, therefore, the Jews were not solely responsible for 
the destruction of religious doctrine and the decay of 





*James Darmesteter: Coup d’oeil sur UVhistoire du peuple 
juif, Paris, 1881, 
1P. 582, 


— 304 — 


faith, they may at least be counted among those who 
helped to bring about such a state of desuetude and the 
changes which followed. If they had never existed, the 
Arabians and the heterodox theologians would have 
filled their place; but they did exist, and existing they 
were not idle. Moreover the Hebrew genius worked not 
only through them, for their Bible became a powerful 
aid to all advocates of freedom of thought. The Bible 
was the soul of the Reformation, just as it was the soul 
of the religious and political revolution in England. 
Bible in hand, Luther and the English recusants blazed 
the path to liberty, and it was through the Bible that 
Luther, Melanchthon and others broke the yoke of Ro- 
man theocracy and overthrew the tyranny of dogma. 
But they made use, too, of that Jewish scholarship 
which Nicholas de Lyra had transmitted to the Chris- 
tian world. Si Lyra non lyrasset, Lutherus non sal- 
tasset, it used to be said, and Lyra had studied with the 
Jews; in fact, he was so steeped in the science of He- 
brew exegesis that he was taken for a Jew himself. Here, 
too, however, it must be remembered, that the Jews were 
not the cause of the Reformation( the absurdity of such 
a contention is patent), though they certainly were its 
promoters. This is the line which should separate the 
impartial historian from the antisemite. The antisem- 
ite says the Jew is the “designer, the constructor and the 
chief engineer of revolutions.’? 

The historian confines himself to the task of investi- 
gating the role which the Jew, given his genius, his char- 





1 Gougenot des Mousseaux, Le Juif, le judaisme et le judaise- 
tion des peuples chretiens (p. 25). 


— 305 — 


acter and the nature of his philosophy and his religion, 
could possibly have played in the revolutionary process 
and in the work of revolution itself. By the revolution- 
ary process, I mean the intellectual progress of revolu- 
tion, or rather what the conservatives call revolution, 
but which may be described as comprising, on the one 
hand, the slow but steady subversion of the Christian 
state and the undermining of religious authority, and 
on the other hand a parallel development on economic 
lines. I have just shown, very briefly, it is true, the part 
played by the Jews in the spread of new ideas during the 
Middle Ages, as well as at the beginning of the Reforma- 
tion, and during the Italian Renaissance when Jewish 
Averroists, like Elias del Medigo, taught at the univer- 
sity of Padua, the last refuge of Arabian philosophy.’ 
We might pursue the subject still further in showing 
what Montaigne, for instance, that half-Jew, owed to 
his ancestry, and whether it was not from that source 
that he drew his unbelief and his skepticism. It would 
be necessary to go still further, to study the critical 
method of the rationalist Spinoza, and to discover its 
relation to the Christian exegesis of the Scriptures. It 
would be necessary to show what were the Jewish ele- 
ments in the metaphysical system of him whom his con- 
temporaries picttured as the prince of atheists,* and who, 








?J. Burckhart, La civilisation en Italie au temps de la Re- 
naissance (Paris, 1885). 

*On Spinoza, as an atheist, consult the Life of Spinoza, by 
Colerus, an opponent of his; of the numerous works published 
against Spinoza and the atheistic movement of the seventeenth 
century, see Kortholt, De Tribus Impostoribus, which revives 
the legend of Averroism; also the treatise of the learned Mu- 
saeus, professor of theology at Jena, “a man of great genius,” 


— 306 — 


according to Schleiermacher, was drunk with God. It 
would be necessary, finally, to trace the influence of 
Spinoza’s teachings on philosophic thought, especially at 
the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nine- 
teenth centuries, when the weazened little Jewish lens- 
maker became the master and the “daily refuge” of 
Goethe, the saint adored by Novalis and Schleier- 
macher, the inspiration of the earliest romanticists and 
metaphysicians of Germany. 

In like manner we would have to inquire what was 
the importance, I will not say of the Jew, but of the 
Jewish spirit throughout the period of fierce revolt 
against Christianity which characterized the eighteenth 
century. We must not forget that in the seventeenth 
century, scholars like Wagenseil, Bartolocci, Buxtorf and 
Wolf, had brought forth from oblivion old volumes of 
Hebrew polemic, written in refutation of the Trinity 
and the Incarnation and attacking all dogmas and forms 
of Christianity with a bitterness entirely Judaic, and 
with all the subtlety of those peerless casuists who cre- 
ated the Talmud. They gave to the world not only 
treatises on questions of doctrine and exegesis, like the 
Nizzachon or the Chizuk Emunah,? but published blas- 
phemous tractates and pseudo-lives of Jesus, of the 
character of the Toldoth Jesho. The eighteenth century 
repeated, concerning Jesus and the Virgin, the outra- 





says our friend Colerus, “who Spinozam pestilentium foctum 
acutissimis, queis solet, telis confodit.” The monstrous cartoons 
of Spinoza bearing the legend “Signum reprobations in vultu 
gerens,” are well known. 

Goethe, Memoires, liv; xvi; Annales, 1811. 

*See Chap. viii—Wolf, Bibl. Hebr., vol. iv, p. 639, 


— 3807 — 


geous fables invented by the Pharisees of the second 
century; we find them in Voltaire and in Parny, and 
their rationalist satire, pellucid and mordant, lives again 
in Heine, in Boerne and in Disraeli; just as the power- 
ful logic of the ancient rabbis lives again in Karl Marx, 
and the passionate thirst for liberty of the ancient He- 
brew rebels breathes forth again in the glowing soul of 
Ferdinand Lassalle. 

I have sketched here, and that in the broadest strokes, 
the function performed by the Jews in the development 
of certain ideas which helped to bring on the general 
revolution; but I have not yet shown how the activity 
of the Jew revealed itself in the very work of revolution. 
I believe I have established the fact, on more than one 
occasion, that the Jews acted as a leaven upon the eco- 
nomic development of the age,’ even though their influ- 
ence may have proved to be, as the partisans of the old 
régime assert, a source of disorder; order and stability 
being represented by the Christian monarchical state. 
If we are to believe Barruel, Crétineau-Joly, Gougenot 
ces Mousseaux, Dom Deschamps, Claudio Jannet, all 
those who see in history the mere work of secret societies, 
the role played by the Jews in the political and social 
upheavals of history has been one of capital importance. 
True it is that, during the last years of the eighteenth 
century, secret associations exercised a great influence 
on the course of events, and though they may not have 
been formulators of the humanitarian, rationalistic and 





*T hope to establish the point still more completely in my Eco 
nomic History of the Jews, of which The Role of Jew in the 
French Revolution forms but a part. 


— 308 — 


revolutionary theories of the time, such societies cer- 
tainly were the cause of the enormously widespread dis- 
semination of revolutionary ideas. They were, in fact, 
great centres of agitation. It cannot be denied that 
Free Masonry and Martinism were powerful agents in 
bringing about the revolution, but it must be remem- 
bered that their importance increased only as the theo- 
ries for which they stood became predominant in society, 
and that, far from being the creators of that spirit of 
the times which was the fundamental cause of the Rey- 
olution, they were in themselves but one of its effects, 
though an effect to be sure which reacted in its turn 
upon the course of events. 

What then was the connection between these secret 
societies and the Jews? The problem is a difficult one 
to solve, for respectable documentary evidence on the 
subject there is none. It is clear, however, that the 
Jews were not the dominant factors in these associations, 
as the writer whom I have just now quoted would have 
it; they were not “necessarily the soul, the heads, the 
grand-masters of Free Masonry,” as Gougenot des Mous- 
seaux mantains.t It is true, of course, that there were 
Jews connected with Free Masonry from its birth, stu- 
dents of the Kabbala, as is shown by certain rites which 
survive. It is very probable, too, that in the years pre- 
ceding the outbreak of the French Revolution, they en- 
tered in greater numbers than ever, into the councils of 
the secret societies, becoming, indeed, themselves the 
founders of secret associations. There were Jews in the 
circle around Weishaupt, and a Jew of Portuguese ori- 





?Gougenot des Mousseaux, loc. cit. 


, 


— 309 — 


gin, Martinez de Pasquales, established numerous groups 
of illuminati in France and gathered a large number of 
disciples, whom he instructed in the doctrines of reinte- 
gration.2, The lodges which Martinez founded were 
mystic in character, whereas the other orders of Free 
Masonry were, on the whole, rationalistic in their teach- 
ings. This might almost lead one to say that the secret 
societies gave expression in a way to the twofold nature 
of the Jew, on the one hand a rigid rationalism, on the 
other that pantheism which, beginning as the metaphys- 
ical reflection of the belief in one God, often ended in 
a sort of Kabbalistic theurgy. There would be little diffi- 
culty in showing how these two tendencies worked in 
harmony; how Cazotte, Cagliostro,? Martinez, Saint- 
Martin, the Comte de Saint Gervais, and Eckartshausen 
were practically in alliance with the Encyclopaedists 
and Jacobins, and both, in spite of their seeming hos- 
tility, succeeded in arriving at the same end, the under- 
mining, namely, of Christianity. 

This, too, then, would tend to show that though the 
Jews might very well have been active participants in 
the agitation carried on by the secret societies, it was 
not because they were the founders of such associations, 
but merely because the doctrines of the secret societies 
agreed so well with their own. The case of Martinez de 
Pasquales is an exceptionable one, and even with regard 
to him, it should be remembered that before he became 
the founder of lodges, Martinez had already been initi- 





7M. Matter, Saint Martin et la philosophie inconnue. 
* The statement is often made that Cagliostro was a Jew, but 
the assertion is based on no real evidence. 


ZnB TO ea 


ated into the mysteries of the illuminati and the Rosi- 
crucians. 

During the Revolution the Jews did not remain inac- 
tive, considering how few their numbers were in Paris; 
the position they occupied as district electors, officers of 
legion, and associate judges, was important. There 
were eighteen of them in the capital, and one must wade 
through provincial archives to determine what part they 
played in affairs. Of these eighteen some even deserve 
official mention. There was the surgeon Joseph Ravel, 
member of the General Council of the Commune, who 
was executed on the ninth Thermidor; Isaac Calmer, 
President of the Committee of Safety at Clichy, exe- 
cuted on the 29th Messidor, Year II; and Jacob Pe- 
reira, who had held the post of commissioner of the Bel- 
gian government with the army of Dumouriez, and who 
as a follower of Hébert, was brought to trial and con- 
demned at the same time as his chief, and was executed 
on the 4th Germinal, Year II.t. We have seen how, as 
followers of Saint Simon, they brought about the eco- 
nomic revolution in which the year 1789 was but a step.? 
the important position occupied by d’Eichthal and 
Isaac Pereira in the school of Olinde Rodriguez. Dur- 
ing the second revolutionary period, which begins in 
1830, they displayed even greater ardor than during the 
first. They were actuated by motives of personal inter- 





1See Emile Campardon, Le Tribunal revolutionnaire de Paris, 
Paris, 1866.—Proces instruit et juge au tribunal revolutionnaire 
contre Hebert et ses consorts (1-4 Germinal), Paris, An. II.-- 
Leon Kahn, Les Juifs a Paris (Paris, 1889). 

*?Capefigue, Histoire des grandes operations financieres.— 
Toussenel, Les juifs rois de l’epoque. 


— 311 — 


est, for in the great number of European countries they 
were not as yet completely emancipated. Those, there- 
fore, who were not revolutionists by temperament or 
principle, became such through self-interest. In labor- 
ing for the triumph of liberalism, they were looking for 
their own good. It is beyond a doubt that the Jews, 
through their wealth, their energy and their talents, 
supported and furthered the progress of the European 
revolution. During this period Jewish bankers, Jewish 
manufacturers, Jewish poets, journalists, and orators, 
stirred perhaps by quite different motives, were, never- 
theless, all striving towards the same goal. “With stoop- 
ing form, unkempt beard, and flashing eye,” writes Cré- 
tineau-Joly, “they might have been seen breathlessly 
rushing up and down everywhere in those countries 
which were unhappy enough to be afflicted with them. 
Contrary to their usual motives, it was not the desire for 
wealth that spurred them on to such activity, but rather 
the thought that Christianity could no longer withstand 
the repeated shocks which were convulsing society, and 
they were preparing to wreak on the cross of Calvary 
revenge for eighteen hundred and forty years of well- 
deserved suffering.” 

Nevertheless, it was not such feelings that animated 
Moses Hess, Gabriel Riesser, Heine, and Boerne in Ger- 
many, Manin in Italy, Jellinek in Austria, Lubliner in 
Poland, and many others besides who fought for liberty 
in those days. To discover in that all-embracing cru- 
sade which agitated Europe until the aftermath of 1848 





*Cretineau-Joly, Histoire de Sonderbund, p. 195 (Paris, 
1850). 


— 3h — 


the work of a few Jews intent on revenging themselves 
on the Nazarene, argues a remarkable mental attitude. 
Still, whatever may have been the end pursued, self-inter- 
est or idealism, the Jews were the most active, the most 
zealous of missionaries. We find them taking part in 
the agitation of Young Germany; large numbers of 
them were members of the secret societies which consti- 
tuted the fighting force of the Revolution; they made 
their way into the Masonic lodges, into the societies of 
the Carbonari, they were found everywhere in France, 
in Germany, in England, in Austria, in Italy. 

Their contribution to present-day socialism was, as is 
well known, and still is very great. The Jews, it may be 
said, are situated at the poles of contemporary society. 
They are found among the representatives of industrial 
and financial capitalism, and among those who have 
vehemently protested against capital. Rothschild is the 
antithesis of Marx and Lassalle; the struggle for money 
finds its counterpart in the struggle against money, and 
the worldwide outlook of the stock-speculator finds its 
answer in the international proletarian and revolution- 
ary movement. It was Marx who gave the first impulse 
to the founding of the International through the mani- 
festo of 1847, drawn up by himself and Engels. Not 
that it can be said that he “founded” the International, 
as is maintained by those who persist in regarding the 
International as a secret society controlled by the Jews. 
Many causes led to the organization of the International, 
but from Marx proceeded the idea of a Labor Congress, 
which was held at London in 1864, and resulted in the 
founding of that society. The Jews constituted a very 


— 313 — 


large proportion of its members, and in the General 
Council of the society, we find Karl Marx, Secretary for 
Germany and Russia, and James Cohen, secretary for 
Denmark.' Many of the Jewish members of the In- 
ternational took part subsequently in the Commune,? 
where they found others of their faith. In the organiza- 
tion of the socialistic party, the Jews participated to the 
greatest extent. Marx and Lassalle in Germany,’ Aaron 
Libermann and Adler in Austria, Dobrojan Gherea in 
Roumania, are or were at one time its creators and its 
leaders. The Jews of Russia deserve special notice in this 
brief résumé. Young Jewish students, scarcely escaped 
from the Ghetto, have played an important part in the 
Nihilistic propaganda; some, among them women, have 
given up their lives for the cause of liberation, and to 





1 Besides Marx and Cohen, mention might be made of Neu- 
mayer, secretary of the bureau of correspondence in 
Austria; Fribourg, who was one of the directors of the 
Parisian Federation of the International to which belonged 
Loeb, Haltmayer, Lazarre and Armand Levi; Leon Frankel, di- 
rector of the German section at Paris; Cohen who acted as dele- 
gate from the Cigar Makers’ Union of London to the Congress 
of the International held at Brussels in 1868; Ph. Coenen who, 
at the same Congress, represented the Antwerp section of the In- 
ternational, etc. See O. Testat: L’Internationale, Paris, 1871; 
and L’Internationale au ban de Europe (Paris, 1871-72) ; Fri- 
bourg, L’Association internationale des travailleurs (Paris, 
1891). 

? Among the others Fribourg and,Leon Frankel. 


* There are at present four Jewish social-democrats in the 
German Reichstag, and among the younger element in the ranks 
of the socialists, collectivists and communistic anarchists, the 
number of the Jews is very large. Of the reform party in Ger- 
many we may mention Doctor Hertzka, the founder of the Frei- 
land Colony, an attempt at realizing the ideal social organization. 
(See Hine Reise nach Freiland, von Theodor Hertska. 


— 314 — 


these young Jewish physicians and lawyers, we must add 
the large number of exiled workingmen who have 
founded in London and in New York important labor 
societies, which serve as centres of socialistic and even 
of anarchistic propaganda.’ 

Thus have I briefly depicted the Jew in his character 
as a revolutionist, or at least have attempted to show 
how we might approach the subject. I have described 
his achievements both as an agent in the dissemination 
of revolutionary ideas, and as an actual participant in 
the struggle, and have shown how he belongs to both 
those who prepare the way for revolution through the 
activity of the mind, and those who translate thought 
into action. The objection may be raised that, in join- 
ing the ranks of revolution, the Jew as a rule, turns 
atheist, and ceases practically to be a Jew. This, how- 
ever, is true only in the sense that the children of the 
Jewish radical lose themselves more easily in the sur- 
rounding population, and that as a result the Jewish 
revolutionist is more easily assimilated. But as a gen- 
eral thing, the Jew, even the extreme Jewish radical, 
can not help retaining his Jewish characteristics, and 





?In April the members of the Jewish revolutionary party in 
London, celebrated the anniversary of the founding of their 
club in Berner street. In reviewing the history of the social 
movement- among the Jews, the orator of the occasion declared 
that “during the last seven years, the Jew has made his en- 
trance as a@ revolutionary; and now wherever there are Jews, 
—in London, in America, in Austria, in Poland, and in Russia— 
there are Jewish revolutionists and anarchists.” By seven 
years, the speaker was referring to the date when the proletar- 
ian class among the Jews first declared their adhesion to the 
revolutionary propaganda. 


Se wath 


though he may have abandoned all religion and all faith, 
he has none the less received the impress of the national 
genius acting through heredity and early training. This 
is especially true of those Jews who lived during the 
earlier half of the nineteenth century, and of whom 
Heinrich Heine and Karl Marx may serve as fitting ex- 
amples. 

Heine, who in France was regarded as a German, and 
was Feproached in Germany with being French, was 
before all things a Jew. As a Jew he sang the praises 
of Napoleon, for whom he entertained a fervent admira- 
tion common to all the German Jews, who had been freed 
from their disabilities by the Emperor’s will. Heine’s 
disenchantment, his irony, are the disenchantment and 
the irony of the Ecclesiastes ;like Koheleth he bore within 
him the love for life and for the pleasures of the earth; 
and before sorrow and disease ground him down death 
to him was the worst of evils. Heine’s mysticism came 
to him from the ancient Job. The only philosophy that 
ever really attracted him was pantheism, a doctrine 
which seems to come naturally to the Jewish philosopher 
who in speculating upon the unity of God by instinct 
transforms it into a unity of substance. His sensuous- 
ness, that sad and voluptuous sensuousness of the Inter- 
mezzo, is purely oriental, and has its source in the Song 
of Songs. The same is true of Marx. The descendant 
of a long line of rabbis and teachers he inherited the 
splendid powers of his ancestors. He had that clear 
Talmudic mind which does not falter at the petty diffi- 
culties of fact. He was a Talmudist devoted to sociol- 
ogy and applying his native power of exegesis to the 


— 316 — 


criticism of economic theory. He was inspired by that 
ancient Hebraic materialism, which, rejecting as too dis- 
tant and doubtful the hope of an Eden after death, 
never ceased to dream of Paradise realized on earth. But 
Marx was not merely a logician, he was also a rebel, an 
agitator, an acrid controversalist, and he derived his gift 
for sarcasm and invective, as Heine did, from his Jew- 
ish ancestry. 

Continuing the argument we might show what 
Boerne, what Lassalle, what Moses Hess and Robert 
Blum owed to their Hebrew origin, and the same with 
Disraeli; and thus we would prove the never-failing per- 
sistence, among thinkers, of the Jewish spirit, that Jew- 
ish spirit which we have already found in Montaigne 
and Spinoza. But if the writers, scholars, poets, phi- 
losophers, and sociologists of the Jewish race have pre- 
served this spirit, is it also true of the mass of the people 
who actually constitute the main strength of socialism 
or anarchism? Here a distinction must be made. The 
Jews of whom I speak, the Jews of London, the United 
States, Holland, Germany and Australia have accepted 
revolutionary doctrines in so far as they belong to the 
proletariat, in so far, that is, as they are a part of that 
class which, for the future, is destined to be engaged in 
continuous warfare against capital; and if they em- 
brace the cause of revolution they do so by virtue of cer- 
tain social laws which drive them to such a course. 
Therefore they do not initiate revolution, but rather 
adhere to it, follow its progress, and put no obstacles in 
its way. And yet these groups of workingmen cut off 
from their ancient faith, and free from all religion, from ~ 


— 317 — 


all belief, in fact, are Jews in the national sense, even 
though they are no longer Jews in the religious sense. 
The Jews of London and of the United States, who, to 
escape the persecutions to which they are subjected in 
Poland and Russia, abandoned their native country, 
have formed associations among themselves in their new 
homes; they have organized societies calling themselves 
“Jewish-speaking groups,” and as such have gained rep- 
resentation at the labor congresses. They speak a jar- 
gon which is a mixture of German and Hebrew, and not 
only employ it in their daily intercourse, but even pub- 
lish their party organs in that vernacular and print 
them in Hebrew characters. The objection might of 
course be raised that, driven from their native country, 
and coming to a land the language of which was strange 
to them, they have been obliged to cling together, and 
that naturally they continue to make use of the vernac- 
ular which is familiar to them. This objection is true 
enough, but it may be pointed out that in other coun- 
tries, as in the Netherlands and Galicia, the workingmen 
of Jewish nationality are likewise organized in separate 
associations.” 

The Jew, therefore, does take an active part in revo- 
lutions ; and he participates in them in so far as he is a 


Jew, or more correctly in so far as he remains Jewish. 
Is it for this reason, then, that the conservative elements 
among Christians are antisemites, and is this predispo- 
sition of the Jews for revolutionary ideas a cause of 
antisemitism? We may say at once that the great ma- 
jority of conservatives overlook entirely the historic and 


— 318 — 


educative role of the Jews. It is appreciated only, and 
that very imperfectly, by the theorists and the literary 
men among the antisemites. The hatred against Israel 
does not come from the fact that the Jews were instru- 
mental in bringing about the Terror, or that Manin lib- 
erated Venice, or that Marx organized the International. 
Antisemitism, the antisemitism of the Christian con- 
servatives, says: “If modern society is so different from 
the old régime; if religious faith has diminished; if the 
political system has been entirely changed; if stock- 
gambling, if speculation, if capital in its industrial and 
financial forms, knowing no spirit of nationality domi- 
nates now and is to dominate in the future, the fault 
rests with the Jew.” Let us clearly examine this point. 
The Jew has been living for centuries in the midst of 
those nations which, so it is said, are now perishing on 
account of his presence. Why, it may be asked, has the 
poison taken such a long time to work? The usual an- 
swer is, because formerly the Jew was outside of society ; 
because he was carefully kept apart. Now that the Jew 
has entered into society, he has become a source of dis- 
order, and, like the mole, he is busily engaged in under- 
riining the ancient foundations upon which rests the 

thristian state. And this accounts for the decline of 
nations, and their intellectual and moral decadence: 
they are like a human body which suffers from the in- 
trusion of some foreign element which it cannot assim- 
ilate and the presence of which brings on convulsions 
and lasting disease. By his very presence the Jew acts 
as solvent; he produces disorders, he destroys, he brings 
on the most fearful catastrophes. The admission of the 


— 319 — 


Jew into the body of the nations has proved fatal to 
them; they are doomed for having received him. Such 
is the very simple explanation which the antisemites ad- 
vance to account for the changes which society is under- 
going. For them there are no such things as economic 
revolutions, no transformations in the nature of capital, 
no such changes in the human conscience. There are 
only two things which they take into consideration: for- 
merly there was a flourishing and prosperous order of 
society based upon solid moral, political and religious 
principles; now men have overturned all the ancient 
moral standards, and have abandoned all the judicious 
and salutary ideas concerning the necessity of absolute 
authority and a priestly hierarchy to preserve the bonds 
of society. But, in former days, the Jew was not ac- 
knowledged a member of society ; at present, on the con- 
trary, he constitutes a very important element in it. 
Here, therefore, is a clear case of cause and effect, and 
the Jew has been made accountable for the work of ages, 
for the work of a thousand different forces which com- 
bine to produce national progress. 

The accusation has not been limited to this alone. The 
Jew, it is said, is not only a destroyer, but also an up- 
builder; arrogant, ambitious and domineering, he seeks 
to subject everything to himself. He is not content 
merely to destroy Christianity, but he preaches the gos- 
pel of Judaism ; he not only assails the Catholic or the 
Protestant faith, but he incites to unbelief, and then im- 
poses on those whose faith he has undermined his own 
conception of the world, of morality and of life. He is 
engaged in his historic mission, the annihilation of the 


— 380 — 


religion of Christ. Are the Christian antisemites right 
or wrong in this respect? Has the Jew retained his 
ancient notions; is he still in his actions anti-Christian ? 
I say in his actions, because he is necessarily anti-Chris- 
tian, by definition, in being a Jew, just as he is anti- 
Mohammedan, just as he is opposed to every principle 
which is not his own. The answer is that the Jew has 
retained his ancient animosities precisely where he has 
been kept outside of society; wherever he herds apart; 
in the Ghettoes, where he lives under the guidance of his 
rabbis, who unite with the powers in authority to pre- 
vent him from attaining light; everywhere, in fact, 
where the Talmud still dominates, and especially in 
eastern Europe where official antisemitism still prevails. 
In western Europe where the Talmud nowadays has lost 
its influence and the Jewish cheder has given place to 
the public school, the hereditary hatred of the Jew for 
the Christian has disappeared in the same proportion as 
the hatred of the Christian for the Jew. For we must 
not forget that though we speak frequently of the ani- 
mosity of the Jew against the Christian, we speak very 
rarely of the animosity of the Christian against the Jew, 
a feeling which always thrives. Prejudice against the 
Jew, or, better still, the numerous prejudices against 
the Jew are not dead. People still believe in an odor 
peculiar to the Jews; a German antisemite goes so far 
as to declare that Pope Pius IX was a Jew, and that he 
became aware of the fact from the odor of the slipper 
which the Pope had extended for him to kiss. Others 
have retained a dim belief in certain diseases peculiar 
to the Jews, and by the side of antisemitic physicians, 


a 


devoted to the discovery of Jewish maladies, there are 
writers who descaut gravely upon the physical type of 
the Jewish tribes. We find in the publications of the 
antisemites all the ancient charges, which were brought 
forward in the Middle Ages, and which the seventeenth 
century revived, accusations which find support in popu- 
lar belief. The most persistent of all accusations, how- 
ever, and the one which typifies best the historic strug- 
gle of Judaism against Christianity, is the charge of 
ritual-murder. The Jew, it is maintained to the present 
day, has need of Christian blood in order to celebrate his 
Passover. What is the origin of this accusation which 
goes back to the twelfth century? 

The first instance of such an accusation being brought 
against the Jews occurred at Blois, in 1171, when they 
were accused of having crucified a child during their 
celebration of Passover. Count Theobald of Chartres, 
after having caused the accuser of the Jews to undergo 
the ordeal by water, which proved favorable to him, con- 
demned thirty-four Jewish men and seventeen Jewish 
women to be burnt. 


We can see clearly enough why the Romans should 
have brought the identical charge against the early 
Christians. It arose from a materialistic conception of 
the Lord’s Supper, from a literal interpretation of the 
words employed in consecrating the flesh and blood of 
Jesus. But how could the Jews, whose sacred books 
breathe forth a horror of blood, have given occasion, and 
still give occasion, for such a belief? This question 
must be discussed to the very bottom. We must exam- 
ine the theories advanced by those who would have it 


— 322 — 


that human sacrifice is a Semitic institution, whereas, 
as a matter of fact, it is found among all peoples at a cer- 
tain stage of civilization. In this manner we would 
prove, as has in fact been proven, that the Jewish relig- 
ion does not demand blood. Can we, however, prove, in 
addition, that no Jew ever shed blood? Of course not, 
and throughout the Middle Ages there must have been 
Jewish murderers, Jews whom oppression and persecu- 
tion drove to avenge themselves by assassinating their 
persecutors or even perhaps their children. Neverthe- 
less, this does not afford a sufficient explanation for the 
popular belief which has its real origin in the wide- 
spread conviction that the Jew was irresistibly impelled 
every year and at the same time to reproduce exactly the 
murder of Christ. It is for this reason that in the leg- 
endary acts of the Infant martyrs the victims are always 
shown as crucified and undergoing the agony of Jesus: 
sometimes even they are represented as wearing a crown 
of thorns and with their sides pierced. To this general 
belief there were added the accusations, often justified, 
which were brought against the Jews as being addicted 
to the practice of magic. Throughout the Middle Ages 
the Jew was considered by the common people as the 
magician par excellence. As a matter of fact, a number 
of Jews did devote themselves to magic. We find many 
formulas of exorcism in the Talmud, and the demonology 
both of the Talmud and the Kabbala is very compli- 
cated, Now it is well known the blood played always 
a very important part in the arts of sorcery. In Chal- 
dean magic, it was of the utmost consequence; in Persia 
it was considered as a means of redemption, and it de- 


— 323 — 


livered all those who submitted themselves to the prac- 
tices of Taurobolus and Kriobolus. The Middle Ages 
were haunted by the idea of blood as they were haunted 
by the idea of gold; for the alchemist, for the enchanter 
blood was the medium through which the astral light 
could work. The elemental spirits, according to the 
magicians, utilized outpoured blood in fashioning a body 
for themselves, and it is in this sense that Paracelsus 
speaks when he says that “the blood lost by them brought 
into being phantoms and larvae.” To blood, and espec- 
ially to the blood of a virgin, unheard of powers were as- 
signed. Blood was the curer, the redeemer, the pre- 
server ; it was useful in the search for the Philosopher’s 
Stone, in the composition of potions, and in the practice 
of enchantments. Now it is quite probable, certain, in 
fact, that Jewish magicians may have sacrificed children, 
and thence the genesis of ritual murder. The isolated acts 
of certain magicians were attributed to them in their 
character as Jews. It was maintained that the Jewish 
religion which approved of the Crucifixion of Christ, 
prescribed in addition the shedding of Christian blood ; 
and the Talmud and the Kabbala were zealously searched 
for text that might be made to justify such a thesis. 
Such investigations have succeeded only through deliber- 
ate misinterpretation, as in the Middle Ages, or through 
actual falsifications like those recently committed by Dr. 
Rohling, and proven spurious by Delitzch. The result, 
therefore, is this, that whatever the facts brought for- 
ward, they cannot prove that the murder of children 
constituted. or still constitutes, a part of the Jewish 
ritual any more than the acts of the maréchal de Retz 


— 3824 — 


and of the sacrilegious priests who practised the “black 
mass” would prove that the Church recommends in its 
books assassination and human sacrifice. 

Are there still in existence in the East sects maintain- 
ing such practices? It is possible. Do Jews constitute 
a part of such societies? There is nothing to support 
such a contention. The general accusation of ritual 
murder, therefore, is shown to be utterly baseless. The 
murder of children, I speak of cases where murder was 
actually proved, and these are very rare,” can be attrib- 
uted only to vengeance or to the practices of magicians, 
practices which were no more peculiar to Jews than to 
Christians. 

The persistence of these accusations against the Jews 
is significant, in that it shows what old leaven of hatred 
still lies in the souls of the people against the murderers 
_of Christ. For it stands to reason that a Christian anti- 
semite does not believe that the Jew of the present time 
who has abandoned his ancient customs, the Jew whom 





1In 1814 a Christian sect arose in Bavaria, known as the 
Brothers and Sisters of Prayer, the members of which brought 
human sacrifices to God. The founder of this sect was called 
Poeschl. In Switzerland, in 1815, a certain Joseph Ganz, 
founded a similar association, to which he gave the same name, 
and which practised the same rites. 


? Consult the report of Ganganelli, afterwards Pope Clement 
XIV, which, after an investigation into the charges of ritual 
murder brought against the Jews, arrives at the conclusion of 
their absolute falsity. (Revue des Etudes Juives, April-June, 
1889). It may be observed here that the bodies of children 
murdered for the purpose of magical practices were never found, 
the magicians having prudently burnt them. 


— 325 — 


ne rubs up against in the street every day, really makes 
use of the blood of little children at certain periods and 
for his own welfare. The real feeling is that he belongs 
to a race which, through hatred of the name of Jesus, 
has prescribed ritual murder, and the antisemite is ready 
to declare that if the enlightened Jew has abandoned 
these abominable and obsolete customs, he has neverthe- 
less preserved the feeling which made them possible. He 
no longer transpierces the Host, to make it shed blood, 
but he attacks Christ in attacking His Church; he is per- 
petually plotting the destruction of the Christian faith, 
he is busily planting the seeds of disorder, and he brings 
doubt upon the spirits of men. How much truth is there 
in these statements? It cannot be denied that the Or- 
thodox Jew has certain prejudices against the Chris- 
tian, but have not the Christians the very same preju- 
dices against him? Nay, more, do not these feel- 
ings prevail between Protestants and Catholics? It 
is precisely the Orthodox Jew who is an element of 
conservatism. M. Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu was right 
in saying: “Is it the Jew of Poland, of Russia, or 
of Roumania that appears to you as a fabricator of 
revolution? Look at him. Is it he or the like of him 
that has succeeded in impelling the modern world into 
untrodden ways? Is it him we suspect of imperilling 
Christian civilization? Poor wretch; for that, he is too 
degraded, too poor, too ignorant, too indifferent to our 
religious and political quarrels. Question him; he will 
not understand you: but that is not all. He is in ad- 
dition too much of a Jew, too religious, too devout, too 
faithful to tradition; in a word, too conservative.”? 


— 326 — 


Among the nations of the West, the orthodox Jew like- 
wise affords evidences of his conservatism. He holds 
to the law and to the regulations of society. He knows 
how to reconcile his Judaism with a spirit of patriotism, 
which in its excess amounts at times almost to Jingoism. 
As we have seen, it was only a minority of emancipated 
Jews who took part in the French Revolution. These 
emancipated Jews, even though they might abandon 
their faith, could not for all that cease to be Jews. And, 
indeed, how could they have done otherwise? By em- 
bracing Christianity, it is said, a course of action fol- 
lowed by some, but from which the majority have re- 
coiled, as merely hypocrisy on their part, inasmuch as 
the emancipated Jew speedily arrives at a state of irre- 
ligion. They have therefore remained Jews by apathy. 
All those revolutionaries of the first half of the nine- 
teenth century, of whom I have spoken, were brought up 
in Judaism, and if they abandoned Judaism in the sense 
that they no longer practised it, they remained its ad- 
herents in retaining the spirit of their nation. 

The emancipated Jew, being no longer bound by the 
faith of his ancestors, and owning no ties with the old 
forms of a society in the midst of which he had lived an 
outcast, has become in modern nations a_ veritable 
breeder of revolutions. Now it has happened that the 
emancipated Jew has drawn perceptibly nearer to the 
Christian unbeliever; but instead of observing that the 
Christian has allied hims«?f with the Jew, because he, 
too, like the Jew, has lost his religion, the antisemites 
would have us believe that the Jew, by his very contact, 
has undermined the faith of the Christians who have 


— 327 — 


joined him. The Jews, therefore, are made responsible 
for the disappearance of religious belief, and the general 
decay of faith ; and in doing so, moreover, the antisemite 
does not distinguish between the Jew who is still faith- 
ful to his religion and the emancipated Jew. To the 
impartial observer, however, it is not the Jew that is de- 
stroying Christianity. The Christian religion is disap- 
pearing like the Jewish religion, like all religions, which 
we may now observe in their slow agony. It is passing 
away under the blows of reason and of science. It is 
dying a natura] death, because it essentially was in har- 
mony with only one period of civilization, and because 
the further we advance, the -less in harmony it is with 
changing conditions. From day to day our yearning 
for the irrational and our need of the supernatural. is 
disappearing, and with them our need for religion, es- 
pecially for the rites of religion: for those éven who be- 
lieve in God, do not believe in the necessity nor in the 
efficacy of worship. 

Has the Jew taken part in this unfolding of the mod- 
ern spirit? Certainly he has, but he is by no means the 
creator of it, nor even responsible for it, for he has 
merely brought an insignificant stone to the edifice 
which the ages have built up. Wipe the Jew out of ex- 
istence, the decadence of Catholicism or Protestantism 
will not be retarded in the Jeast. If the Jew gives us an 
impression to the contrary, it is because he has played 
a very great role in Germany, in Austria, in France, and 
in Italy, in the history of modern liberalism, and liber- 
alism has advanced hand in hand with anti-clericalism. 
The Jew has indeed been an anti-clerical. He prepared 


— 3828 — 


the way for the Kulturkampf in Germany, he supported 
the Ferry laws in France. The general belief is that 
the Jew was a liberal because he was an anti-Christian, 
whereas the contrary is true. From this point of view 
it is only just to admit that the Jewish Liberals have 
been hurtful to Christianity, or, at least, that they have 
been the allies of those whose activity was inimical to 
Christianity. For the antisemite and conservative, to 
de-Christianize is to denationalize, which argues a con- 
fuson of thought on their part, in that they make nation 
and state synonymous. Anti-clerical liberalism does not 
denationalize. It does destroy the old Christian state. 
But the nineteenth century witnessed the last effort on 
the part of the Christian state to retain its dominance. 
The conception of a feudal state, based upon unity of be- 
lief, and in the advantages of which heretics and unbe-. 
lievers could not participate, is opposed to the notion of 
a neutral and secular state, upon which the greater num- 
ber of political entities are at present based. Thus anti- 
semitism represents one phase of the struggle going on 
between the two types of state of which we have just 
spoken. The Jew is the living testimony of the disap- 
pearance of that state which had its foundation in theo- 
logical principles and the restoration of which is the 
dream of the Christian antisemite. The day when the 
Jew was first admitted to civil rights the Christian state 
was in danger. This is true, and the antisemites who 
say that the Jews have destroyed the idea of State could 
more justly say that the entrance of the Jew into society 
' marked the destruction of the State, meaning by State 
the Christian State. In the eyes of the conservative, 


— 329 — 


nothing indeed is so significant as the presence of the 
Jew in modern society; and by a very common mode of 
reasoning they have made a cause out of that which is 
only an effect, because this effect in its turn acts, it is 
true, as a cause. 

These, then, in brief, are the political and religious 
mainsprings of antisemitism. First and fundamental are 
hereditary dislike and prejudice; then, as a result of 
these prejudices, an exaggerated conception of the role 
which the Jews have played in the development and or- 
ganization of modern society ; a conception in which the 
Jews appear as the representatives of the revolutionary 
spirit, against the spirit of established order; of change 
against tradition; a conception which makes them re- 
sponsible in this age of transition for the fall of anti- 
quated institutions and the disappearance of ancient 
beliefs, 


— 330 — 


CHAPTER XIV. 
THE ECONOMIC CAUSES OF ANTISEMITISM. © 


Economic Antisemitism.—The Case Against the Jew. 
—The Moral Charge.— The Dishonest Jew.—Jew- 
ish Astuteness and Bad Faith—The Corrupting 
Influence of the Talmud.—Restrictive Legislation 
and Jewish Fraud.—Mercantilism and Usury as 
Causes of Degradation—Money and the Decline of 
Morality—The Economic Charge.—The Jew and 
Present Social Conditions.—The Importance of the 
Jews in Capitalistic Society The Jew in Finance 
and in Industry.—The Jew as the Possessor of Cap- 
ital.— Disadvantages under Which the Jew Labors 
under Present Conditions——The Jewish Proletar- 
ians in Europe and America.—The Jews of the 
Middle Class.—The Relative Supremacy of the Jew. 
—Causes of Such Supremacy.—Jewish Solidarity 
versus Middle Class Individualism.—The Jewish 
Brotherhood.—Its Origin and Antiquity——The 
Synagogues.—The Middle Ages.—The Ghettoes.— 
Modern Times.—The Kahal in the Countries of the 
East.—Minorities in Western Europe and the Soli- 
darity of Classes.—Opposition Between Different 
Forms of Capital as a Cause of Antisemitism.— 
Agricultural Capital versus Industrial Capital.— 
The Jewish Stockbroker and the Small Trader.— 
Competition and'Antisemitism.—Competition inthe 


— 331 — 


Ranks of Capital and in the Labor Market.—Griey- 
ances Against the Jews and Economic Antisemi- 
tism.—Antisemitism and the Intestine Struggles 
of Capital. | 


After being assailed as a Semite, as a stranger, as a 
revolutionist, as an enemy to Christianity, the Jew is 
attacked as a factor in economic affairs. This has been 
the case ever since the dispersion. Already hefore our 
era the Romans and the Greeks were jealous of the privi- 
leges which permitted the Jews to carry on trade under 
more favorable conditions than the rest of the people,’ 
and during the Middle Ages the usurer was hated as 
much as, if not more than, the murderer of Christ.2_ The 
condition of the Jews was changed at the end of the 
eighteenth century; and so favorable was the change to 
them that it tended to confirm, if not to increase, the 
feeling of antipathy with which they were regarded. 
Economic antisemitism to-day is stronger than it ever 
was, for the reason that to-day, more than ever, the Jew 
appears powerful and rich. Formerly he was not seen: 
he remained hidden in his Ghetto, far from Christian 
eyes. He had but one care, to conceal his wealth, that 
wealth of which tradition regarded him as the gatherer, 
and not the proprietor. The day he was freed from his 
disabilities, the day the restrictions put to his activities 
fell away, the Jew showed himself in public. Indeed, he 
showed himself with ostentation. He wished, after cen- 
turies of imprisonment, after years of oppression, to ap- 





1 Chap. ii. 
7 Chap. v. 


— 332 — 


pear a man; and he had the naive vanity of the savage. 
That was his way of re-acting upon centuries of humilia- 
tion. On the eve of the French Revolution, they saw 
him humble, timid, an object of general contempt, ex- 
posed to insult and injury. They found him after the 
tempest, free, liberated from every constraint, and from 
a slave, become a master. Such a rapid exaltation was 
offensive. People were affronted by the wealth which 
the Jews had now attained the right to pile up, and re- 
course was had at once to the old accusation of the fa- 
thers, the charge that the Jew was an enemy to society. 
The wealth of the Jew, it was said, is gained at the ex- 
pense of the Christian. It is acquired through decep- 
tion, through fraud, through oppression, by all means. 
and principally by detestable means. This is what I 
shall call the moral charge of the Antisemites, and it may 
be summed up thus: the Jew is more dishonest than the 
Christian ; he is entirely unscrupulous, a stranger to 1s 
alty and roan 
Is this charge well founded? It was true and still is 

true in all those countries where the Jew is kept outside 
of society; where he receives only the traditional Tal- 
mudic education ; where he is exposed to persecution, to 
insult, and to oppression; where people refuse to recog- 
nize in him the dignity and the independence of the hu- 
man being. The moral condition of the Jew is due 
partly to himself, and partly to exterior circumstances. 
His soul has been moulded by the law which he imposed 
on himself, and the law which has been forced upon him. 
Throughout the centuries he lived twice a slave: he was 
the bondman of the law, and the bondman of everyone, 


— 333 — 


He was a pariah, but a pariah whom teachers and guides 
united to keep in a state of servitude more complete than 
the ancient bondage of Egypt. From without a thou- 
sand restrictions impeded his way, arrested his develop- 
ment, restrained his activity; within he was confronted 
by an elaborate system of prohibitions. Outside the 
Ghetto he experienced the constraint of the law; within 
the Ghetto he suffered the oppression of the Talmud. If 
he attempted to escape from the one, a thousand punish- 
ments awaited him; if he ventured to depart from the 
other, he exposed himself to the Cherem., that awful ex- 
communication which left him alone to the world. It 
would have been vain to attack these two hostile powers 
boldly ; and therefore the Jew attempted to triumph over 
them by guile. Both forms of oppression developed in 
him the instinct of cunning. He attained to an une- 
qualed talent for diplomacy, to a subtlety rarely found. 
His natural finesse increased, but it was employed for 
base purposes—to deceive a tyrannical God and despotic 
rulers. The Talmud and anti-Judaic legislation united | 
to corrupt the Jew to his very depths. Impelled by his 
teachers, on the one hand, by hostile legislation on the 
other, by many social causes besides, to the exclusive 
occupation of commerce and of usurv, the Jew became 
degraded. The pursuit of wealth ceaselessly prosecuted, 
debauched him, weakened the voice of conscience within 
him, taught him habits of fraud. In this war of self- 
preservation which he was forced to carry on against the 
world and against the secular and religious law, he could 
conquer only by intrigue, and the unhappy wretch, given 


1 Chap. y. 





——— 


— 334 — 


over to humiliations, to insults, forced to bow his head 
under blows and curses and persecution, could avenge 
himself on his enemies, his tormentors, his executioners 
only by guile. Robbery and bad faith became his weap- 
ons; they were the only weapons of which he could pos- 
sibly make use, and therefore he exerted himself to elab- 
orate them, to sharpen them, and to conceal them. 
When the walls of the Ghetto were overthrown, the 
Jew, such as he had been made by the Talmud and the 
legislative and social restrictions imposed upon him, did 
not change all at once. Upon the morrow of the Revolu- 
tion he lived just as he had lived upon its eve, nor did he 
alter his customs, his manners, and, above all, his spirit, 
as quickly as his condition in life had been altered. Liber- 
ated, he retained the soul of a slave, that soul which he 
is losing day by day as one by one the memories of his 
degradation are disappearing. ‘To-day, in order to find 
the Jew as the antisemites represent him, we must go to 
Russia, to Roumania, to Poland, where discriminating 
laws still rage in full force, or to Hungary, Galicia and 
Bohemia, where the Jewish schools retain their exclusive 
domination. And if in Western Europe there are Jews 
of a certain category among those engaged in trade and 
speculation who are, by force of inherited instinct, still 
given to cunning, to intrigue and even to deception, they 
are no worse in this respect than the traders and specu- 
lators of the Christian faith, whom long experience in 
business has rendered unscrupulous. To such an asser- 
tion, however, the antisemites always have this answer 
ready: “The Jews have perverted the Christians, and 
even though it be confessed that the class of capitalists, 


a Babee 


entrepreneurs and traders shows itself harsh, cruel, 
grasping, faithless towards the exploited class, the fault 
rests with the Jews, who are responsible for present so- 
cial conditions, nay, more, who are the very cause of such 
conditions.” This is really the great economic charge 
against the Jews. 

But here, too, the antisemites are the victims of an 
error. The Jew is not the cause of the present state of 
things which is, in reality, the result of a long evolu- 
tion. It is true that he has played his part in the eco- 
nomic revolution which has resulted in establishing the 
supremacy of the bourgeoisie; but far from being the 
cause, he has been only one of the factors that have 
brought about such a transformation, by no means the 
sole factor, nor even the principal one.? 

I have already shown? how in the course of time the 
bourgeoisie found in the Jew a powerful and marvel- 
ously endowed ally. During long centuries, while soci- 
ety was still plunged in the barbarism of the Middle 
Ages, the Jew, the trader of old, well armed, well pro- 
vided with a fine mental equipment, and rich in the pos- 
session of ages of experience, was either the representa- 
tive of capital as employed in commerce and in usury, or 
else aided in its creation. Nevertheless, these forms of 
capital did not attain their greatest influence until the 
labor of centuries had prepared the way for their domi- 
nation and had transformed them into industrial and 
bonded capital. To accomplish this Capital needed 
those two great movements, the Crusades and the 





Chap. v. 
7 Chap. ix. 


— 336 — 


discovery of America, followed by the manifold 
colonial enterprises of Spain, of Portugal, 
of the Netherlands, of England, and _ of 
France, all the activity, in fact, of the age of commer- 
cial development. It needed the establishment of public 
credit and the rise of great banking institutions. It 
needed the rise of manufactures and the scientific dis- 
coveries which brought about the invention and the per- 
fection of machinery. It needed all the elaborate legis- 
lation looking towards the restriction of the laborer’s 
rights and wages, until the moment came when the pro- 
letariat was deprived even of the right of association ; it 
needed all that and many other causes besides, causes his- 
toric, religious and moral, in order to make present-day 
society what it is. Those who maintain that the Jews 
are the sole cause of the present state of things succeed 
only in establishing their own absurdly marvelous igno- 
rance. 

Of course, as I have just said, the part played by the 
Jews in the development of modern society, was impor- 
tant, but its true character is very little known, or, at 
least, very imperfectly known, and that especially to the 
antisemites. It is not to this very elementary knowledge: 
of the economic history of the Jews that antisemitism 
must be atributed. Our knowledge of the Jews since 
their emancipation is more complete; in France, under | 
the Restoration and the July Monarchy, they stood at 
the head of the financial and industrial enterprise, and 
were among the founders of the great canal, railway and 
insurance companies. In Germany their activity was ex- 
ceedingly great. They were at the bottom of all the leg- 


— 337 — 


islation favorable to the carrying on of banking and ex- — 
change, the practice of usury and speculation. It was 
they who profited by the abolition, in 1867, of the ancient 
laws limiting the rate of interest. They were active in 
bringing about the enactment of the law of June 1870, 
which exempted stock companies from government su- 
pervision. After the Franco-German War, they were 
among the boldest speculators, and at a time when Ger- 
man capitalists were carried away by a passion for the 
creation of industrial combinations, they acted a no less 
important part than had the Jews of France, from 1830 
to 1848.1. Their activity persisted until the financial 
panic of 1873, when the country squires and the small 
traders who had been ruined by the excesses of this 
Griinder Periode (the era of promoters) in which the Jew 
had played the most important part, gave themselves up 
to the most violent antisemitism, such, indeed, as pro- 
ceeds only from injured interests. 

Once the important part played by the Jews of this 
period had been proven, and, indeed, their importance 
was undeniable, people proceeded to the conclusion that 
the Jew was the possessor of capital par excellence. This 
became an added cause of hatred against him. The 
Jews, it was asserted, held everything, and the word Jew, 
after having been a synonym for knave, malefactor and 
usurer, came to be used as equivalent to rich. Every 
Jew is a capitalist; such is the common belief. The 
error of course is deep. The vast majority of Jews, 
nearly seven-eighths of the total number, in fact, live in 
extreme poverty. In Russia, in Galicia, in Roumania, 





. ‘Otto Glagau, loc. cit. 


— 338 — 


Servia and Turkey, their destitution is appalling. For 
the most part they are artisans, and as such they suffer 
equally with Christian wage-earners from present social 
conditions. They are, ed, among the most disinher- 
ited of the proletariat. In the East End of London, in 
that congested Jewish population composed almost en- 
tirely of refugees from Poland, Jewish tailors, working 
twelve hours a day in the sweatshops, earn on an average 
twelve cents an hour. The majority, moreover, find em- 
ployment only during three days in the week, a large 
number work only from two to three days a week, and at 
all times there is an unemployed population of from ten 
to fifteen thousand Jews living in a state of utter misery, 
verging on starvation. In New York, they are counted 
by the hundred thousand, and before the organization of 
the tailors’ unions, many were forced to work twenty 
hours a day for five or six dollars a week. Since the 
foundation of the unions, however, though their earnings 
may not have increased, the hours of labor have been re- 
duced to eighteen hours per day, and in some factories to 
sixteen.t In Russia their condition is still worse. In Vilna, 
Jewish women employed in the knitting mills receive 
forty kopecks (the kopeck is equal to one-half of a cent) _ 
for a day of fourteen hours. Fifty kopecks is the average 
wage for men in all of the trades, for a day varying from 
fourteen to twenty hours. The immense majority of 
working men crowded together within the cities of the 
Pale can find no market at all for their labor.? In Gali- 





1Miss I. Van Etten, “The Russian Jews as Immigrants,” The 
Forum, April, 1893. 


?Leo Errera, The Russian Jews. 


— 339 — 


cia the condition of the working population is no better, 
and the same is true of Roumania. 

There remain, then, about two million Jews in West- 
ern Europe and in the United States, who may be said 
to belong to the middle class. Of these two millions, 
however, it must be admitted that if they were of very 
little importance a hundred years ago, they are of very 
great importance to-day. Through their wealth, through 
their education, through their relations to one another, 
they occupy a place far out of proportion to their num- 
bers. Compared with the general body of the population 
they are but a handful, and yet their position in life is 
such that they are to be seen everywhere, and in number 
seem to be legion. It is true that we must avoid the 
comon error of comparing them with the total popula- 
tion of any country, inasmuch as they do not generally 
live outside of towns, but confine themselves to the cities 
where they play a correspondingly important part. If 
we would arrive at some exact statistical basis we must 
compare them to the Christian population of their own 
class, that is, to the bourgeoisie of commerce, industry 
and finance. And yet even when we reduce the compari- 
son to these two factors, the Jew versus the bourgeoisie, it 
is still in favor of the Jew.t. Wherefore, then, this pre- 





1It is customary to compare the two million Jews, who may 
be called the possessors of capital in various degrees, to the total 
mass of Christian inhabitants, overlooking the fact that the 
vast majority of Jews is composed of laborers and artisans. If 
we wish to consider the J ews as a nation, a nation with no deter- 
mined geographical boundariés, We must endeavor to ascertain 
whether there are not among them both a class of wage-earners 
and class of capitalists, as indeed I have already proven, and then 
to compare the class of Jewish capitalists with the class of 


— 340 — 


ponderance? Some Jews are in the habit of ascribing 
their economic supremacy to their intellectual superior- 
ity. This boast of Jewish superiority is not altogether 
true, or, at least, requires explanation. In the present 
bourgeois society, which is founded upon the exploita- 
tion of capital and upon exploitation by capital, where 
the power of wealth is supreme, where stock-jobbing and 
speculation are all-powerful, the Jew is certainly better 
equipped for success than any other body. Though he may 
have been degraded by his exclusive devotion to com- 
merce through the ages, his experience has nevertheless 
endowed him with certain qualities which have become 
of surpassing value in the new organization of society. 
He is cold and calculating, supple and energetic, perse- 
vering and patient, clear and exact, qualities which he 
has inherited all from his ancestors, the money changers 
and traders of mediaeval times. When he devotes him- 
self to commerce or to finance, he naturally profits by 
the educaton which his ancestors have undergone 
through centuries, an education which has rendered him, 
perhaps, not more suited for certain pursuits as his van- 
ity suggests, but certainly more adaptable to. them. In 
the present industrial struggle, he is better endowed, 
man for man,—I am speaking in general terms—than 
his competitors, and all things being equal, he must suc- 
ceed because of his superior equipment. He has no need 
to make use of fraud, or, at least, to make more use of it 
than his neighbors, since his personal and inherited 





Christian capitalists. In this manner only can we attain a cor- 
rect formula for the purpose of statistical comparison and a 
true version of things. 


— 341 — 


qualities are sufficient to assure him the victory. 

Still the possession of such personal gifts is not suffi- 
cient to explain the preponderance of the Jews. Among 
the Christians, too, there are ancient merchant families; 
a section of the bourgeoisie has inherited qualities very 
similar to those of the Jews, and therefore it would 
seem, should be able to challenge the Jews successfully. 
The answer is that there are other, farther reaching 
causes, arising both from the nature of the Jew and 
from the chaycater of modern society. Bourgeois 
society is based entirely upon competition between man 
and man in the field of the daily necessities of life. It 
affords us the spectacle of individuals fighting bitterly 
one against the other, of isolated units stubbornly dis- 
puting the victory and making use of their own individ- 
ual resources. In this state of society Darwin’s prin- 
ciple of the struggle for life dominates. This spirit 
governs the actions of every man, and tacitly it is recog- 
nized that victory ought to belong to the strongest, to 
him, that is, who is best equipped, whose body and whose 
spirit are most perfectly adjusted to the social conditions 
of existence. That form of activity which is based on 
solidarity, on common action, and on a common under- 
standing, is to be found only outside of this class. 
Historians, philosophers and economists unite in recog- 
nizing only the principle of individual effort. It is only 
against its common enemies, against the proletariat and 
against those who attack capital that our capitalistic 
Bourgeoisie resorts to the principle of solidarity. If we -~ 
conceive, then, in the midst of such a community, based, 
upon egoistic action, associations of citizens strongly 


— 342 — 


\ organized and gifted, animated for many centuries by 
the spirit of common action, and knowing by instinct 
and experience, the advantages which they may derive 
from union, it is certain that such organizations by 
directing their activity towards the same end as that pur- 
sued by the scattered individuals around them will pos- 
sess such an advantage in the struggle as to assure them 
an easy victory. This is just the role which is being 
played by the Jews of the middle class in modern society. 
They are desirous of winning the same prizes of life as 
the Christian; they enter the same field of battle; they 
have the same ambitions; they are just as keen, just as 
greedy, just as hungry for wealth, just as foreign to any 
form of justice that is not the justice of their caste, or 
that does not defend them against the classes they hold 
in subjection; they are, to sum up, just as immoral at 
bottom as the Christian in the sense that they consider 
only the advantages which they may obtain for them- 
selves, and that the sole ambition of their lives is the 
acquisition of material goods, of which each hopes and 
strives to obtain the maximum. But in this daily 
struggle, the Jew, who, personally, as we have already 
seen, is better endowed than his competitors, increases 
his advantage by uniting with his co-religionists pos- 
sessed of similar virtues, and thus augments his powers 
by acting in common with his brethren; the inevitable 
result being that they out-distance their rivals in the 
pursuit of any common end. In the midst of a dis- 

/ united middle class, whose members are engaged in a 

perpetual struggle against one another, the Jews stand 

\ united as one. This is the secret of their success. 


— 343 — 


Their solidarity is all the stronger in that it goes so far 
back. Its very existence is denied, and yet it is un- 
deniable. The links in the chain have been forged in 
the course of ages until the flight of centuries has made 
man unconscious of their existence. It is worth our 
while to see how this bond of union was formed and 
how it was perpetuated. 

Jewish solidarity dates from the Dispersion. Jewish 
emigrants and colonists took up their residence in for- 
eign countries, and wherever they made their home they 
constituted a distinct society. Their communities cen- 
tered around their houses of prayer, which they built in 
every town where they formed a nucleus. Everywhere 
they possessed numerous important privileges (see Chap- 
ters II and III.). The Diasporoi were invaluable allies 
of the Greeks in carrying on the work of eastern coloniza- 
tion, and strangely enough the Jews who adopted Hellen- 
ism, assisted in turn in Hellenizing the East. As a 
recompense they were allowed to retain their national 
homogeneity, together with full powers of self-govern- 
ment. This was the case in Alexandria, in Antioch, in 
Asia Minor, and in the Greek cities of Ionia. In almost 
every city they constituted corporations at the head of 
which was an ethnarch or patriarch, who, with the as- 
sistance of a council of leaders and a special tribunal, 
exercised all the powers of civil authority and of justice. 
The synagogues were “veritable small republics.’’? 
They were, in addition, the centres of religious and pub- 
lic life. The Jews came together in their synagogues, 
not only to listen to the reading of the Law, but also for 

TE. Renan, Vie de Jesus, p. 142. 








— 344 — 


the discussion of their private affairs and for the pur- 
pose of exchanging views upon the general course of 
events. All the synagogues were closely connected in a 
vast federation which included within its scope the en- 
tire ancient world, progressing parallel with the expan- 
sion of the Macedonian power and Hellenistic civiliza- 
tion. They communicated with one another by messen- 
gers and kept one another in constant touch with events, 
the knowledge of which was likely to prove useful. 
They sought one another’s counsel and rendered one an- 
other aid. At the same time, of course, the synagogues 
were bound together by a powerful religious tie. They 
preserved their independence, but they felt themselves 
sisters. The eyes of all Jews turned towards Jerusalem 
and towards the Temple, to which they sent their annual 
tribute, and the love which they felt for the Holy City, 
the passion with which they clung to their faith, served 
to bring to their mind their common origin and to 
cement their union. The small synagogues of the 
Grecian cities no less than the powerful Jewish colonies 
in Antioch and Alexandria were the creators of Jewish 
solidarity, both in its local and its world-wide aspects. 
In every city the Jewish traveller could count upon the 
aid of the community; when he arrived as an immigrant 
or as a settler, he was received as a brother, succored in 
his need and assisted in his designs, he was permitted 
to take up his home wherever he desired and he enjoyed 
the protection of the community which put all its re- 
sources at his disposal. He did not come as a stranger 
bound upon a difficult conquest, but as one well equipped 
and with protectors, friends, and brothers by his side. 


— 345 — 


Throughout Asia Minor, the Archipelago, Cyrenaica and 
Egypt, a Jew might travel in perfect security; every- 
where he was treated as a guest, everywhere he proceeded 
straight to the house of prayer, where he was sure to find 
a welcome. The Essenes carried on their propaganda in 
the same manner. They, too, created their little social 
centres, little associations in the very heart of the Jewish 
communities, and in this fashion they traveled from city 
to city, at their own free will taking no thought of the 
morrow. 

At Rome, where they lived in considerable numbers,’ 
the Jews were as firmly united as in the cities of the 
Orient. “They are bound together by indissoluble 
bonds by the ties of loving sympathy,” says Tacitus.* 
Thanks to their solidarity, they had acquired at 
Rome, as in Alexandria, such power that politi- 
cal parties feared them and sought their support. “You 
know,” says Cicero,? “how great is the multitude of the 
Jews, how, firm their union and their sympathy, how 
striking their political skill and their sway over the 
crowd in the assemblies.” 

When the Roman Empire fell, when the barbarian 
hosts invaded the ancient world, and triumphant Catho- 
licism entered upon its career of expansion, the Jewish 
communities did not change. They were still powerful 
organisms and the activity of their common life was such 
as to lend them great powers of resistance. In the midst 





? B®. Renan estimates the number of Jews in Rome at -the time 
of Nero at from twenty to thirty thousand (L’Antechrist, p. 7, 
note 2). 

*Hist. vy. 5. 

*Pro Flacco, xxviii. 


— 346 — 


of the universal upheaval they preserved their religious 
f and social unity, two inseparable bonds to which they 
owe their prosperity. The members of the Jewish 
synagogues drew still more closely together. It was 
owing to this mutual support that they suffered nothing 
from the great changes that were going on about them. 
For some time, even after the Gothic and German king- 
doms had been established Jewish communities preserved 
a certain degree of self-government. They were placed 
under a special jurisdiction and in the midst of those 
new societies they constituted veritable trading corpora- 
tions in which none of the ancient solidarity was want- 
ing. In proportion as the nations became more hostile 
to the Jews, in proportion as persecution and oppressive 
legislation increased, their solidarity increased. The 
external and internal forces which tended to imprison 
the Jews within the narrow circumference of their 
Ghettoes, only served to foster the spirit of union among 
them. Isolated from the world, they only tightened the 
bonds which held them together. Their common life 
nourished the desire for, and the need of, fraternal ac- 
tion. In other words, the Ghettoes developed the spirit 
of Jewish solidarity. In addition, the synagogues had 
succeeded in preserving their authority, so that while the 
Jews were subject to the harsh laws of king and of em- 
peror, they had also a government of their own, councils 
of elders, and tribunals, to whose decisions they sub- 
mitted. Their general synods forbade, in fact, any Jew 
under the pain of anathema, from citing a fellow Jew 
' before a Christian tribunal.1 Everything drove them to 
?These synods frequently met after the twelfth century, and 





— 347 — 


unity in those long years of horror and cruelty known as 
the Middle Ages. Had they been disunited they would 
have suffered still more. By common action they could 
defend themselves the more easily and escape some of the 
calamities that threatened them without end. Though 
their life was made miserable by the imposition of num- 
erous regulations, the fraternal aid which they rendered 
one another enabled them frequently to evade the num- 
berless burdens which were piled upon them. At the same 
time the ancient relations between synagogue and syna- 
gogue were maintained, and in this manner the cosmo- 
politan spirit of the Jews was preserved with their 
solidarity. The communities frequently came to one an- 
other’s aid and instances of this bond of sympathy are 
plentiful, such as that very characteristic act of the 
Levantine Jews, who, after the martyrdom of the Jews 
of Ancona, made a common agreement to suspend all 
commercial relations with that town and to transfer 
their trade to Pesaro, where Guido Ubaldo had received 
the fugitives from Ancona. The Doctors and the Rabbis | 
encouraged this feeling of solidarity which was further 
increased by the spirit of Talmudic exclusiveness. In 
the eleventh century a Rabbinical synod at Worms, for- 
bade a Jewish landlord to rent out his house, occupied 
by a Jew, to a Gentile without the consent of the tenant.’ 
and a council of the twelfth century forbade a Jew, 





constituted 'the first general assemblies of the Rabbis since the 
closing of the Talmud. Jacob Tam (Rabbenu Tam), the 
founder of the school of Tossafists, was the first to bring about 
the reunion of such assemblies, for the purpose, undoubtedly, of 
considering means of common resistance to persecution. 

4 Jost, Geschichte der Juden, Berln, 1820, Vol. 2. 


— 348 — 


under the pain of anathema, to bring a fellow Jew be- 
fore a Christian tribunal. The Jewish community, or 
Kahal, made use of a powerful weapon against those 
who proved themselves lacking in the spirit of solidarity ; 
it struck them with anathema and pronounced against 
them the Cherem Hakahal (the ban of the community). 
This excommunication fell upon all those who failed in 
their duty to the community; those, for instance, who 
refused to acknowledge the full value of their possessions 
in order to evade the taxes imposed for the maintenance 
of the synagogue; those who, in drawing up a legal in- 
strument with a fellow Jew, omitted to have such docu- 
ment attested by the notary of the community; those 
who would not submit to any decision arrived at by the 
Kahal for the common welfare; finally, all those who 
by word_or writing attacked the Law and the Talmud, 
and worked for the destruction of Israel. Mordechai 
Kolkos, Uriel Acosta and Spinoza were among the last. 
In this manner, the action of time, the influence of 
hostile legislation and of religious persecution, and the 
need for mutual defense, have-intensified the feeling of 
v - fellowship among the Jews. In our own day the power- 
ful institution of the Kahal exerts its influence wherever 
the Jew is subjected to a rigorous regime, and even the 
reformed Jew, who has broken away from the narrow 
restrictions of the synagogue, and yields no obedience to 
the will of the community, has not forgotten the spirit 
of solidarity.t| Once having acquired the sentiment 





*Maurice Aron, Histoire de Vercommunication juive, Nimes, 
A. Catelan, 1882. 


*The Alliance Israelite Universelle, founded in 1860 by 


— 349 — 


of union and fostered it by the habit of ages, they could — 
not get rid of it in getting rid of their faith. It had p 
become a social instinct, and social instincts, slowly 
formed, are slow to disappear. This also should be kept 
in mind: the Jew had taken his place as a member of 
eociety on a basis of equality with the rest of the people, 
but he nevertheless constituted a minority, and the law 
which impels minorities to unite may be said almost to 
be a corollary of the law of self-preservation. A number 
of individuals in the presence of an overpowering aggre- 
gation will perceive that to preserve their existence by 
the side of the majority, they must unite their forces 
in order to offer a successful resistance to an outside 
power which threatens to destroy them, that they must 
form a compact unit, become, in other words, an or- 
ganized minority; not that it has leaders, or theoretic 
Tulers, or a government and laws, but because it con- 
sists of small groups firmly united and acting in constant 
co-operation. A Jew will always obtain assistance from 
his co-religionists, provided he be found faithful to the 
ties of Jewish brotherhood; but, if on the contrary, he 
prove hostile to the sentiment of Jewish unity, he will 
meet with nothing but hostility. The Jew, even though 
he may have departed from the synagogue, is still a 


te 





Adolphe Cremieux, and numbering at present more than thirty 
thousand members, has served only to foster the fraternal spirit 
among the Jews. The aims of the Alliance are to ameliorate 
the intellectual and moral conditions of the Jews in the Orient 
iy the establishment of schools, to take measures for their relief 
from oppression, and to bring about their complete emancipa- 
tion. 


— 350 — 


member of the Jewish free-masonry,' of the Jewish 
clique, if you will. 

United, then, by the strongest feelings of solidarity, 
the Jews can easily hold their own in this disjointed 

| end anarchic society of ours. If the millions of Chris- 
tians by whom they are surrounded were to substitute 
this same principle of co-operation for that of individ- 
ual competition, the importance of the Jew would im- 
mediately be destroyed. The Christian, however, will 
not adopt such a course, and the Jew must inevitably, I 
will not say dominate, the favorite expression of the 
antisemites, but certainly possess the advantage over 
others, and exercise that supremacy against which the 
Antisemites inveigh, without being able to destroy it, 
seeing that its reason lies not only in the middle class 

f among the Jews, but in the Christian bourgeoisie as well. 
The accusations enumerated above are therefore the ex- 
pression of hatred on the part of the Christian capitalist 
who sees himself outdistanced and supplanted by his. 
Jewish rival; but such accusations do not constitute the 
basis of economic antisemitism, the real cause of which 
I have just demonstrated. 

If we keep in mind, then, this conception of Jewish 
fellowship and the fact that the Jews at present, consti- 
tute an organized minority, we are not unjust in con- 
cluding that antisemitism is, in part, a mere struggle 
among the rich, a contest among the possessors of capi- 
tal. In truth, it is the capitalist, the merchant, the 
manufacturer, the financier, among the Christians, who 





1I am not speaking, of course, of Masonic lodges, but use the 
word E’ree Masonry in the broad meaning of the term. 


— 351 — 


feels himself injured by the Jews, and not the Christian 
proletariat, who suffer no more from the class of Jewish 
employers than from their Christian masters; less, in- 
deed, if we consider that in a case like this, where num- 
bers count, the entrepreneur class among the Jews by 
comparison with the Christians amounts to little. This 
will explain why antisemitism is essentially the senti- 
ment of the middle classes, and why it is so rarely met 
with, except in the form of a vague prejudice among 
the mass-of the peasants and the working classes. 

This war within the ranks of capital does not reveal 
itself after the same fashion; it presents rather two as- 
pects, according as it arises from the hostility between 
the landowning class and the capitalist class in the nar- 
rower sense, or from competition within the industrial 
class itself. 

The agrarian capitalist, in his contest against the 
captain of industry, has embraced antisemitism, because 
to the territorial lord, the Jew is the representative of 
commercial and industrial capitalism. For this reason, 
in Germany, the Agrarian Protectionists, are bitter 
enemies of the Jews, who are among the most conspicu- 
ous champions of free trade. By instinct and self- 
interest the Jews are opposed to the physiocratic theory 
which would vest political power only in the owners of 
land ; they maintain rather the theory of modern indus- 
trialism, which makes political power go hand in hand 
with industrial development. Jews and Agrarians both 
are probably unconscious, as individuals, of the part 
they are playing in the economic struggle, but their 
mutual hatred comes from this source, nevertheless, 


— 352 — 


The man of the lower middle class, the small tradesman 
whom speculation has probably ruined has much clearer 
ideas of why he is an Antisemite. He knows that reck- 


less speculation, with its attendant panics, has been his 


ace, 


bane, and for him, the most formidable jugglers of 
capital, the most dangerous speculators are the Jews; 


, which, indeed, is very true. Those even whose down- 


fall has not been caused by speculation, ascribe their 
misfortunes indirectly to this cause which has destroyed 
a great part of the industrial and commercial capital of 
the world. But here, as everywhere, they make the Jew 
responsible for a state of things, of which he is far from 
being the sole cause. 

The other form of economic antisemitism is more 
simple. It arises from the direct competition between 
Jewish and Christian brokers, manufacturers, and mer- 
chants. The Christian capitalist, acting for the most 
part, independently of his fellows, when confronted by 
the harmonious, if not united, opposition of the Jewish 
capitalists, finds himself necessarily at a disadvantage, 
and in the daily struggle for life frequently succumbs to 
his adversaries. He, therefore, suffers directly, from 
the rise of Jewish manufacturers and merchants. 
Hence his extreme animosity against the Jews, and the 
desire to break the power of his fortunate rivals. This 
is the most violent, the most bitter of all the manifes- 
tations of antisemitism, because it is the expression of 
the sentiments of those who feel themselves injured in 
their personal interests. 

One might be tempted to find an indication of anti- 
semitism proceeding from direct competition, in the dis- 


— 353 — 


play of hostility by the working classes against the Jews 
of London and New York. This, however, would not be 
exactly true. Russian and Polish immigration into 
England and the United States has brought about a 
considerable increase in the working population of the 
great industrial centres, and as a result has occasioned 
a great decrease in wages and brought about the rise of 
the hideous sweating system in the East End of London 
and on the East Side of New York. There has conse- 
quently been some agitation against the Jewish proletar- 
ians, especially against the members of the tailors’ 
trades, who constitute a majority of the immigrants. 
This movement, however, has nothing inherently anti- 
semitic in it, but is similar to the opposition aroused 
among workingmen in other countries by the importa- 
tion of foreign labor; such is the case with the Italian 
and Belgian laborers in France, whom the employers 
eagerly seize on at very great advantage to themselves.’ 
The same is true of competition in the middle class. 
If there this movement is consciously antisemitic, it is 
not solely because the Jews form a free-masonry or 4 





+A clearer idea of economic antisemitism may be obtained 
from a study of the Chinese Question in America. Constituting 
1 minority in race and religion and differently endowed from 
the Americans, the Chinese, through their firm organization, 
have aroused the fear of the capitalists, who accuse them of 
draining the country of its wealth, and of reducing wages by 
their entrance into the labor market. The feeling of hostility 
against the Chinese has given rise, besides the anti-immigration 
law, to legislative measures greatly curtailing their rights, 
checking their influence, end limiting their opportunities. Sim- 
ilar measures have been proposed against German and Russian 
immigration, 


— 354 — 


minority too well-organized. As a matter of fact the 
Protestants are organized after a similar fashion, and 
yet, save in rare instances, Anti-Protestantism does not 
rage any more in France than Anti-Catholicism in Eng- 
land, where in their turn the Catholics form a powerful 
minority. There must be another cause, and that, one 
of capital importance. It is this. The Jews, it is true, 
are a minority like the French Protestants or the Ger- 
man Catholics, but the Protestants in France and Catho- 
lies in Germany form a national minority, whereas the 
Jews are regarded as strangers. We find ourselves in 
the presence therefore of a struggle, which is not merely 
a contest betwen two forms of capital, or between a 
number of capitalists, but rather a conflict between na- 
tional capital and capital which is looked upon as for- 
eign. It is the continuation of the old historic contest, 
commeneed in antiquity, when the Ionian cities “at- 
tempted to force the Jews resident within their walls to 
abjure their faith or to bear the weight of public dis- 
abilities.”? It persisted throughout the Middle Ages, 
when the Jews were thought of by the young nations 
the people which had crucified God, when it was discov- 
ered, too, that this race of strangers had concentrated 
in their hands all wealth. When Christian commerce 
arose, it, too, attempted to crush a rival who seemed all 
the more dangerous because he was not sprung from the 
soil, and it succeeded in part by the establishment of 
fraternities, corporations, and orders, by the organiza- 
tion, that is, of Christian wealth. 

This prejudice against the Jews has prevailed to the 


Theodore Mommsen, History of Rome, 





— 355 — 


preesnt day, secret, instinctive rather than deliberate, 
and acquired by heredity. People still feel an intense 
bitterness against the deicides, and glance with no fav- 
orable eye at their riches, for they still find it difficult to 
understand how this tribe of miscreants and murderers, 
doomed to perdition, can legitimately be the owners of 
wealth. The belief is still held that the Jew cannot 
acquire wealth without plundering the sons of the soil— 
every owner of land looking upon himself as its child. 
If economic antisemitism therefore must be regarded 
as the manifestation of a struggle within the ranks of 
capital, we must not forget, too, that it is an outcome of 
the opposition between national and foreign wealth. 


—_ 


— 356 — 


CHAPTER XV. 
THE FATE OF ANTISEMITISM. 


The Causes of Antisemitism.—Antisemitism of the Pres- 
ent Day and Anti-Judaism in Former Times.—The 
Permanent Cause.—The Jew as a Stranger and the 
Manifestations of Antisemitism.—The Jew and As- 
similation.—The Jew and His Surroundings.— 
Modification of the Jewish Type.—The Disappear- 
ance of External Characteristics—The Disappear- 
ance of Internal Characteristics—The Religion of 
the Synagogue at the Present Day.—The Decline 
and Fall of Talmudism.—The Jew an Assimilated 
Element.—The Disappearance of Religious Preju- 
dices Against the Jew.—The Decay of the Spirit of 
Particularism and National Exclusiveness.—The 
Progress of Cosmopolitanism.—Antisemitism and 
Economic Change.—The Struggle Against Capital. 
—The Capitalist Alliance.—Capital and Revolution. — 
—The Antisemites as Adversaries of Revolution.— 
The End of Antisemitism. 


We have seen then that the causes of antisemitism 
are, in their nature, ethnic, religious, political and econ- 
omic. They are all causes of far reaching importance, 
and they exist not because of the Jew alone, nor because 
of his neighbors alone, but principally because of pre- 
vailing social conditions. Ignorant of the real cause of 


— 357 — 


their sentiments, those who profess antisemitism, jus- 
tify their opinion by accusations against the Jew which, 
as we have seen, do not at all agree with facts. Charges 
racial, charges religious, charges political and economic, 
none of these grievances of antisemitism are well 
founded. Some, like the ethnic grievance arise from a 
false conception of race; others like the religious and 
political charges, are due to a narrow and incomplete 
interpretation of historical evolution; and last of all, 
the economic count, has its justification in the necessity 
of concealing the strife going on within the capitalist 
class. None of these accusations is justified. It 
is no more correct to say that the Jew is a pure 
Semite than it would be to say that the European 
peoples are pure Aryans. There is, in fact, no legiti- 
mate basis for the very notion of Aryan and Semite, one 
superior to the other. We have seen that there is no 
such thing as race in the sense in which the word is 
generally employed, that is, to denote a human aggre- 
gate, descended from the same pair of primitive ances- 
tors, and suffering no admixture of foreign elements 
throughout the entire course of its development. The 
belief which made purity of blood the basis of communal 
life, even though it must have been justified at a time 
' when humanity consisted of a number of minute and 
heterogeneous groups, was no longer tenable when these 
groups united to form cities. The idea, nevertheless, 
persisted and became an ethnological fiction, which 
ancient cities embellished with legends in recounting 
the lives of their heroic founders. The fiction changed 
‘when cities in turn began to unite, and nations arose; 


————— 


— 358 — 


but it survived just the same and gave rise to the con- 
struction of interminable genealogies for the purpose of 
establishing a common descent for all the members of 
the same State. 

If it is true that the Jews are not a race, it is unjust 
to look upon them as the cause of undesirable change in 
modern society. This is really assigning them too im- 
portant a role, a role of such importance indeed as to 
make the antisemites seem philosemites in fact. To 
make Israel the central figure of the world’s history, the 
leaven of peoples, the awakener of nations, is absurd ; 
nevertheless this is what both the friends and the enemies 
of the Jew are guilty of. Whether it be Bossuet or 
Drumont, they have ascribed to the Jew an exaggerated 
importance, which the latter, with characteristic untu- 
tored vanity, has not been loathe to accept. But of this 
vanity we must be rid. If the all-powerful-Church has 
seen its influence decrease in spite of the desperate ef- 
forts of the bourgeoisie to revive it and if religious in- 
difference advances with the growth of revolutionary 
ideas, the fault does not rest with the sons of Jacob. 
The Jews are not in themselves the creators of present 
conditions, but merely by the force of inherited habits 
have been more able to adapt themselves to prevailing 
circumstances. They are not the founders of this capi- 
talistic, financiering, stock-jobbing, trading, manufac- 
turing, society of ours, though they have profited by it 
more than any others. They enjoy at present many 
great advantages, not because they resort to methods of 
procedure which are unfair or dishonest, as their adver- 
saries declare, but because in the course of centuries, 


— 359 — 


hostile legislation, religious persecutions and the politi- 
cal and social restrictions under which they lived, have 
served to prepare them for the present form of society, 
by equipping them with superior weapons for the daily 
struggle of life. 

Still though the Jews are not a race, they were, until 
our own days, a nation. They did not fail to perpetuate 
their national characteristics, their religion and their 
theological code, which was at the same time a social 
code. Though they were never guilty of working for 
the destruction of Christianity, and were never organized 
in a secret conspiracy against Jesus, they did lend aid 
to those who assailed the Christian religion, and in all 
attacks on the Church, they were ever in the front rank. 
In the same way, even if they did not constitute a vast 
secret society, implacably pursuing through the centur- 
ies as its object, the undermining of monarchy, they did 
render important aid to the cause of Revolution. In the 
nineteenth century they were among the most ardent ad- 
herents of the liberal, social, and revolutionary parties, 
to which they contributed men like Lasker and Disraeli, 
Crémieux, Marx and Lasalle,! not counting the obscure 
herd of agitators. To the revolutionary cause, too, they 
contributed their wealth. Finally, as I have just said, 
if they did not, by themselves, erect the throne of 
triumphant capitalism on the ruins of the old regime 
the were instrumental in its erection. Thus are the 
Jews found at the opposite poles of modern society. On 





This is not the place to discuss the respective importance of 
these men, who differed among themselves in so many ways; it 
is sufficient here to recall the part they severally played. 


— 360 — 


the one hand they labor assiduously at that enormous 
concentration of wealth, which, no doubt, is bound to 
result in its expropriation by the State; on the other 
hand, they are among the most bitter foes of capital. 
Opposed to the Jewish money baron, the product of exile, 
of Talmudism, of hostile legislation and persecution, 
stands the Jewish revolutionist, the child of biblical and 
prophetic tradition, that same tradition which animated 
the fanatic Anabaptists of Germany in the sixteenth 
century, and the Puritan warriors of Cromwell. In the 
midst of the many transformations which our age has 
witnessed, they have not remained inactive; indeed, it is 
their activity which has, I will not say caused, but rather, 
perpetuated, antisemitism, for antisemitism is but the | 
successor of the anti-Judaism of the Middle Ages. Long — 
ago, in Spain, the persecution of the Moriscoes and 
the Marranos was an attempt to eliminate a foreign ele- 
ment in the Spanish nation; and in the same way the 
Jews were regarded as a strange tribe, a horde of dei- 
cides, whose aim was by propaganda to infuse their spirit 
into the Christian peoples, and, in addition, to obtain 
possession of great wealth, the importance of which was 
becoming apparent even during the early years of the 
_ Medieeval period. Antisemitism, at present, in Eastern 
Europe, at least,’ finds different expression from that of 
former times; the charges brought against the Jew have 








1In Eastern Europe, in Persia and in Morocco, we have an 
approximately correct picture of the antisemitic movement of 
the Middle Ages. Social prejudice, restrictive legislation, in- 
sults, humiliations, riots, massacres, exile, nothing is wanting. 
This, I believe, I have proved for Russia and Roumania, in 
Chapter viii, 


— 361 — 


also varied, in that they are formulated after a different 
fashion and are given a basis of ethnologic and anthro- 
pologic theory; but the causes have not altered appre- 
ciably, and modern antisemitism differs from the anti- 
Judaism of former times only in that it is more self- 
conscious, more pragmatic, and more deliberate. At the 
bottom of the antisemitism of our own days, as at the 
bottom of the anti-Judaism of the thirteenth century 
are the fear of, and the hatred for, the stranger. This is 
the primal cause of all antisemitism, the never failing 
cause. It appears in Alexandria under the Ptolemies, 
in Rome during the lifetime of Cicero, in the Greek 
cities of Ionia, in Antioch, in Cyrenaica, in feudal Eu- 
‘rope, and in the modern state whose soul is the spirit 
of nationality. 

Let us leave now this old Anododaion and concern 
ourselves only with the antisemitism of modern times. 
A product of the spirit of national exclusiveness and of 
a reaction on the part of the conservative spirit against 
the tendencies set into motion by the Revolution, all the 
causes which have brought it about, or have served to 
maintain it, may be reduced to this one only: the Jews 
are not as yet assimilated ; that is to say, they have not 
yet given up their belief in their own nationality. By 
the practice of circumcision, by the observation of their 
special rules of prayer and their dietary regulations, 
they still continue to differentiate themselves from those 
around them ; they persist in being Jews. Not that they 
are incapable of the sentiment of patriotism—the Jews 
in certain countries, as in Germany, have contributed 
more than anybody else to the realization of national 


— 362 — 


unity—but they seem to solve the apparently unsolvable 
problem of constituting an integral part of two nation- 
alities ; if they are Frenchmen, or if they are Germans,’ 
they are also Jews, and if they succeed in gaining some 
slight appreciation as Germans or as Frechmen, their 
Judaism does not fail to invoke the liveliest reproach. 
Among all nations they are regarded as the Americans 
regard the Chinese, as an aggregation of strangers who 
have secured possession of the same privileges as the 
native-born, but who refuse to give up their separate 
identity. They are still considered as different from the 
rest, and the more the nations take on their peculiar 
characteristics, the more marked these differences become. 
In the great process of evolution which leads every people 
to assimilate harmoniously the various elements which 
compose it, the Jews are the refractory element. They 
are always the stiff-necked nation, against which the 
lawmaker launches his anathema. They still cling to 
forms of social life long since abolished and whose sepa- 
rate existence has long ago been destroyed. In a certain 
measure they are a nation which has survived its na- 
tionality, and for ages has been resisting death. 

Why is this so? Because everything has contributed 
to maintain their peculiar characteristics as a people; 
because they have been the possessors of a religion which 

| is national in character, and which had its perfect reason 





7The German Antisemites accuse the Jews of entertaining 
sentiments hostile to Germany, and of partiality for the inter- 
ests of France; but the French antisemites, in turn, reproach 
the Jews with entertaining a tender regard for Germany. This 
is merely a way of saying that the Jews are strangers, or, to put 
it in a better form, are not yet assimilated. 


— 363 — 


for existence while the Jews constituted a people, but 
which ceased to be of service after the Dispersion and 
now tends only to keep them apart from the rest of the 
world; because all over Europe they have established 
colonies jealous of their prerogatives, and clinging firmly 
to their customs, to their religious practices, to their 
manners of life; because they have been living for ages 
under the domination of a theological code, which has 
rendered them immobile; because the laws of the numer- 
ous countries in which they have made their abode, to- 
gether with prejudice and persecution, have prevented 
them from mingling with the body of the people; be- 
cause since the second exodus, since their departure, that 
is, from Palestine, they have raised around themselves, 
and others have raised around them rigid and insur- 
mountable barriers. Such as they are they are the re- 
sult of a slow process of creation, on their own part, 
and on the part of others: their intellectual and moral 
life is what it is, because others made it their object 
to differentiate the Jews from the world, and the Jews 
themselves devoted themselves to the same object. They 
feared defilement through contact, and they were feared 
in turn as a source of defilement. Their doctors for- 
bade them to unite with the Christians, and the Chris- 
tian lawmakers forbade all union with the Jews. Of 
their own impulse they devoted themselves to the occu- 
pation of money-changing, and they were forbidden to 
exercise any other profession than that; of their own 
accord, they separated themselves from the world, and 
they were forced by others to remain in the Ghettoes. 
In this manner did they remain different from those 


— 364 — 


who lived beside them. Before their emancipation, 
however, they escaped the notice of man. They held 
themselves apart, and no one came into contact with 
them. Their portion was allotted to them; their terri- 
tory was marked out for them, and they lived on the 
outskirts of society, without retarding in the least the © 
general course of events, for they did not constitute a 
part of society. Once they were liberated, they scattered 
themselves everywhere, appearing before the eyes of men 
such as the ages had made them. They produced the 
same impression that would be experienced now, if of a 
sudden all the Gypsies of the world should rally to civili- 
zation, and demand their place in society. The environ- 
ment in which the Jews had been living for so long a time 
had changed, but they themselves had not changed, and 
it required more than the decree of the National Assem- 
bly to accomplish such a feat. The product of a religion 
and of a law, the Jews could not alter unless that law 
and that religion were altered. 

Here we find ourselves confronted with a most serious 
objection. ‘The antisemites are not content with say- 
ing that the Jew belongs to a different race, and is 
therefore a stranger, but they declare that he is by nature 
an element which can never be assimilated; and even if 
some of them admit that the Jew may become a con- 
stituent part in the composition of nations, they would 
have it that such an amalgamation is only detrimental 
to that nation. The Semite, it is maintained, saps the 
strength of and destroys the Aryan, and this in spite of 
the antisemitic theory that the superior race is bound 
to overcome the inferior race without being in the least 


affected by it. Are the Jews then incapable of assimila- 
tion? Not the least in the world, and their entire his- 
tory proves the contrary. It shows us* how large is the 
number of Jews who have become mixed with the other 
nations through baptism, how numerous were their con- 
versions in the Middle Ages; how many Jews have been 
absorbed by the surrounding population, going over of 
their own free will to Christ, or driven to the baptismal 
font by the violence of monks and fanatical kings. Jews, 
in short, of whom we can no longer find any trace, just 
as we can no longer find any traces of the Goths, the 
Alamani and the Suevi, who with many other peoples 
united to form the French nation. At all times the 
Jew, like all Semites, has been in touch with the Aryan; 
at all times there has been intercommunication between 
the two races, and nothing can serve better to prove that 
their assimilation is possible. Besides, to demonstrate 
that the Jews cannot be assimilated, it is necessary to 
prove that they are incapable of change, for a human 
being incapable of adapting himself to his surroundings, 
can no more be merged into any social aggregation than 
a foreign element can enter into the economy of the 
human body. But as a matter of fact, the Jews have 
been constantly transformed by their surroundings. If 
we find certain resemblances between the Spanish Jew 
and the Jew of Russia’ we find also marked differences, 
and these differences are due not only to the absorption 
of other races, attracted and converted by the Jew, but 


1 Chap. x. 


‘I am speaking, of course, of the Jews who have remained 
true to their faith. 





— 366 — 


are the result also of the Jew’s natural environment, so- 
cial, moral, and intellectual. The Jewish type has varied 
not only geographically, but has changed through time; 
it is a truism that the Jew of the Roman Ghetto was 
not the same as the Jew who fought under Bar-Cochba, 
just as the Jew of our great European cities does not 
resemble the Jew of the Middle Ages. Of course, the 
differences which I have pointed out as prevailing among 
Jews of different countries and of different times, ate 
less striking than their resemblances; but that only 
proves that the artificial environment in which the Jew 
has been forced to live has proved more effective than his 
natural environment. This is always true in the history 
of Man, that he is less affected by climatic conditions 
against which he is always in reaction, than by his social 
surroundings. The Jew has been no exception to this 
law of human evolution, and it is not the snows of 
Poland, or the burning suns of Spain that have been the 
principal factors in his development. He has been re- 
duced to a state of petrifaction by the hostile laws of the 
nations in which he lived, and by his religion, a puis- 
sant and fearful religion, like all non-metaphysical reli- 
gions which are characterized predominantly by a ritual 
and-a~Law. For the Jew this religion and this Law 
have always been the same, in all times and all places. 
They have been constant forces in his development, both 
externally and internally. 

But during the last hundred years, these seemingly 
constant factors have undoubtedly undergone a change.* 





1TI must repeat once more that I am speaking now only of the 
Jews of Western Europe, who have been admitted to the rights 


— 367 — 


There are no longer external legislative restrictions on 
the Jew; the special laws to which he was formerly sub- 
jective have been abolished, and henceforth, he is amen- 
able only to the laws of the country of which he is a 
citizen (and these laws, let me remark, differing with 
every country constitute in themselves a factor of differ- 
entiation for the Jew). With the disappearance of dis- 
criminating laws, his own peculiar laws have also dis-) 
appeared. The Jew no longer lives apart, but shares in 
the common life; is no longer a stranger to the civiliza- 
tion of the countries which have received him; has no 
longer a literature of his own; nor manners that mark 
him as different from others. In short, he has adapted 
himself to the mode of life of whatever nation he adheres 
to. And as these modes of life differ from nation to 
nation, they serve to create marked differences among 
the Jews themselves, with the progress of time creating 
more and more striking variety among them. Day by 
day they are departing from the class of occupations and 
the type of religion peculiar to the Jew. These, it is 
true, still exist, but they are maintained only by inter- 
nal factors, by faith, by religious practices, and the 
manners of life which they impose, but which, necessar- 
ily, inevitably, indeed, must disappear. 

At the presnt day, the religious practices of the Jews 
vary with the different countries. While in Galicia, for 
example, the utmost minutie of religious observances 
are still maintained; in France, in England, and in 





of citizenship in the countries where they live, and not of the 
Jews of the East, who are still subject to discriminating laws, 
as in Roumania, in Russia, in Morocco, and in Persia, 


Ye 


Germany they are reduced to the minimum. If the 
study of the Talmud is still held in respect in Poland, 
in Russia, and in certain parts of Germany and Austria- 
Hungary, in other countries it has fallen into complete 
disrepute. The gulf betwen the emancipated Jew of 
France and the Talmudic Jew of Galicia widens day by 
day; and in this manner differences are created in the 
midst of Israel, differences which may be even observed 
between the reformed Jew and the orthodox. 

Still more important, however, is the fact that the 
Talmudic spirit is slowly vanishing. Such schools of 
the Talmud as still exist in Western Europe are disap- 
pearing day by day: the modern Jew is not even able to 
read Hebrew; freed from the bonds of the rabbinical 
code, the synagogue of the present day professes at most 
a sort of ceremonial deism, and deism itself is losing 
its strength with the modern Jew, making every re- 
formed Jew ready for rationalism. Nor is it only Tal- 
mudism that is dying, but the Jewish religion itself is in 
its death agony. It is the oldest of all existing religions, 
and it would seem right that it should. be the first to dis- 
appear. Direct contact with the Christian world has 
started it upon its course of dissolution. For a long time 
it has endured as all bodies endure which are deprived of 
light and air: but once a breach is made in the cavern in 
which it has been sleeping, the sun and the fresh breath 
of the outside air have entered and it has fallen apart. 
Together with the Jewish religion, the Jewish spirit is 
vanishing. True it is that that was the spirit which 
animated Heine and Boerne, Marx and Lassalle, but 
they were still the products of the Jewry; they were 


oe eye 


cradled in traditions which the young Jews of to-day 
overlook or despise. At the present time, if there is still 
such a thing as Jewish personality, it tends to 
disappear. In this manner the Jews, made 
up as they are of several dissimilar strata, which 
similar conditions of external life, similar intellectual 
tendencies, similar religious, moral and social character- 
istics have united, are now resuming their heterogeneity. 
The constant factors in their evolution have become 
variable, and their artificial uniformity is disappearing 
for the reason that the Jewish faith, the Jewish prac- 
tices, and the Jewish spirit, and with this faith, prac- 
tices, and spirit, the Jews themselves, are disappearing. 
What religious persecution could not bring about, the 
decline of religious faith, based upon national ideal has 
accomplished. The emancipated Jew, freed alike from 
hostile legislation and obscurant Talmudism, far from 
being an element to absorb others, has become an element 
that can be readily absorbed. In certain countries, as 
in the United States, the distinction between Jews and 
Christians is rapidly disappearing.t It is vanishing 
from day to day, because from day to day the Jews are 
abandoning their ancient prejudices, their peculiar 
modes of worship, the observance of their special laws of 
prayer and their dietary regulations. They no 
longer persist in the belief that they are destined always 
to remain a people; they no longer dream—a touching 
dream, perhaps, but ridiculous—that they have an eter- 
nal mission to fulfill. The time will come when they 
shall be completely eliminated; when they shall be 





> Henry George, Progress and Poverty. 


— 370 — 


merged into the body of the nations, after the same man- 
ner as the Pheenicians, who, having planted their trad- 
ing stations all over Europe disappeared without leaving 
a trace behind them. By that time, too, antisemitism 
will have run its course. The moment, to be sure, is not 
near ; the number of orthodox Jews is still great, and as 
‘long as they exist it would seem that antisemitism 

| must exist. Still antisemitism is not caused solely by 
Israel; it is the product of religious, ethnic, and econ- 
omic causes which are independent of the Jew, and 
which are also capable of modification and of ultimate 
disappearance. In our own day we may say that their 
decline is a fact. 

If Judaism, then, is in the process of dissolution, 
neither is Catholicism or Protestantism gaining in 
strength, and we may venture to say that every external 
form of religion is losing its influence. The contrary, 
of course, is maintained in the case of the Christian re- 
ligion ; but in doing so, people are either the victims of 
an illusion, or else are guided by selfish interests. As 
Guyau has said,? “Religion has found defenders among 
the skeptics who support it partly out of regard for the 
poetry of life and the esthetic beauty which. lies in 
myths, and partly for its practical utility.” This neo- 
mysticism is an outgrowth of that hunger for poetry and 
beauty, which believes that it can find satisfaction only 
in religious illusion. As for the practical value of re- 
ligion we see it now sustained by that same capitalistic 
bourgeoisie which formerly attacked all religious belief 
in so far as it was the ally of the partisans of the ancient 


7M. Guyau, L’Irreligion de Vavenir; Paris, 1893, p. xix. 





— 371 — 


regime, but who now call upon religion to strengthen \ 


their influence and defend their own privileges. These, 
however, are only artificial manifestations; religion it- 
self in any positive or definitely prescribed form is 
rapidly disappearing. On the one hand, we are advanc- 
ing towards a narrow and stupid materialism, opposed to 
all religious feeling; on the other, our way is towards a 
state of philosophic and moral un-religion which shall 
be “a degree higher than religion or civilization itself.”* 
At the same time while these tendencies are increasing, 
religious prejudice is tending to disappear, and the pre- 
judice of Christian against Jew, and of Jew against 
Christian, persistent, in its way, as the prejudice of the 
Catholic against the Protestant, cannot possibly be the 
only one to remain. Even now it is decreasing in in- 
tensity, and the time is near, no doubt, when every Jew 
will no longer be held responsible for the sufferings of 
Jesus on Calvary. With the steady extinction of reli- 
gious animosities, one of the causes of antisemitism must 
disappear, and antisemitism itself must lose much of its 
violence, though exist it will, so long as the economic and 
ethnic causes which have made it, endure. 

The spirit of national egotism and self-sufficiency, 
however strong it may be at present, is also showing signs 
of decay. Other ideas have arisen, which from day to 
day are gaining in influence; they enter into the spirits 
of men, they impress themselves upon their understand- 
ing, they engender new conceptions and new forms of 
thought. Though the principle of nationality is still a 
guiding force in international politics, brutal and un- 

1M. Guyau, loc. cit., page xv, 








ee 


— 372 — 


reasoning hatred against the foreigner is no longer up- 
held as a doctrine.’ A new civilization is in the process 
of making, common to all enlightened nations—a civi- 
lization of humanity that shall be above the French 
civilization, or the German civilization, or the English 
civilization. Science, literature, and the arts are be- 
coming international; not that they are losing those 
peculiar characteristics which constitute their charm and 
their value, nor that they are all aiming at the same 
deadly uniformity, but because they are animated by the 
same spirit. The brotherhood of nations which form- 
erly was a mere chimera, may be dreamt of now, without 
transcending the limits of common sense. The sentiment 
of human solidarity is growing stronger; and the num- 
ber of thinkers and writers who labor at furthering its 
growth is increasing from day to day. The nations are 
coming into closer touch, and are learning to know one 
another better, admire one another, love one another. In- 
creased facilities of communication tend to favor the 
development of the cosmopolitan spirit, and this spirit 
of cosmopolitanism will unite one day the most diverse 
of races in a peaceful Federation of definite entities, 
substituting universal altruism for selfish patriotism. 
The Jews are bound to profit by this decline of national 
exclusiveness, in that it must coincide with the partial 
elimination of their own peculiar characteristics. The 
progress of internationalism must bring about the de- 
cay of antisemitism. Parallel with the decline of na- 





1Hxceptions are the class of sublimated patriots, who, in 
France, for instance are Anglophobes and Germanophobes, on 
principle rather than for any ascertainable reason. 


— 373 — 


tional prejudices’ the Jews will witness the economic 
causes of antisemitism losing their force. At present 
the Jews are assailed as the representatives of foreign 
wealth. It is therefore just to suppose that when the 
animosity against things foreign shall have disappeared, 
Jewish capital will no longer be an object of attack for 
Christian capital. Competition will, of course, persist 
in spite of all this, and those Jews who persist in main- 
taining their national identity, will always remain the 
objects of an hostility based upon this competitive 
struggle. 

Other events, however, and other changes may bring 
about the disappearance of these economic causes. In 
the struggle which is now on between the proletariat and 
the industrial and financial classes, we shall possibly see 
Jewish and Christian capitalists forgetting their dif- 
ferences to unite against a common enemy. If present 
social conditions persist, however, such a union of the 
Christian and Jewish bourgeoisie can only bring about 
a temporary truce. From the battle which must in- 
evitably be fought out, the indications are that Capital 
cannot come out the victor. Founded upon egoism, upon 
selfishness, upon injustice, upon lies, and upon theft, our 
present society is doomed to disappear. However bril- 
liant it may appear, however resplendent, refined, lux- 
urious, magnificent, it is stricken with death. It has 
been weighed morally and found wanting. The bour- 
geoisie which exercises all political power because it holds 
control of all economic agencies, will draw upon its 
resources in vain; in vain will it appeal to all the 
armies that defend it, to all the tribunals of justice 


eee gs 


that watch over it, to all the legal codes that pro- 
tect it; it will not be able to withstand the in- 
flexible laws which day by day are working towards the 
substitution of communal property for the capitalistic 
régime. 

Everything is tending to bring about such a consum- 
mation. With its own hands the class of property owners 
is working destruction; for whenever a certain class of 
possessors enter into a struggle for the attainment of 
their selfish interests they are unconsciously fighting 
against themselves, and to the advantage of their — 
enemies. Every intestine struggle within the capitalist 
class must redound to the benefit of the revolutionary 
cause. In proclaiming war against the Jewish capitalist, 
the Christian capitalists are warring upon themselves, 
and are helping to undermine the foundations of that 
state of society of which they are the most ardent cham- 
pions. Such is the irony of things that antisemitism 
which everywhere is the creed of the conservative class, 
of those who accuse the Jews of having worked hand in 
band with the Jacobins of 1789 and the Liberals and 
Revolutionists of the nineteenth century, this very anti- 
semitism is acting, in fact, as an ally of the Revolution. 
Drumont in France, Pattai in Hungary, Stoecker and 
von Boeckel in Germany are co-operating with the very ~ 
demagogues and revolutionists whom they believe they 
are attacking. This antisemitic movement, in its origin 
reactionary, has become transformed and is acting now 
for the advantage of the revolutionary cause. Anti- 
jecenitin stirs up the middle class, the small tradesmen, 
/and sometimes the peasant, against the Jewish capitalist, 


= Bie 


but in doing ‘so it gently leads them toward Socialism, 
prepares them for anarchy, infuses in them a hatred for 
all capitalists, and, more than that, for capital in the 
abstract. . 

And thus, unconsciously, antisemitism is working its. 
own ruin, for it carries in itself the germ of destruc- 
tion. Nor can it escape its fate. In preparing the way 
for Socialism and Communism, it is laboring at the 
elimination not only of the economic cause, but also of 
the religious and ethnic causes which have engendered it, 
and which will disappear with this society of ours of 
which they are the products. 

Such, then, is the probable fate of modern anti- 
semitism. I have tried to show how it may be traced ° 
back to the ancient hatred against the Jews; how it 
persisted after the emancipation of the Jews, how it 
has grown and what are its manifestations. I have at- 
tempted to discover the reasons for this existence, and 
having determined those, have ventured to predict its 
future on the basis of them. In every way I am led to 
believe that it must ultimately perish, and that it will 
perish for the various reasons which I have indicated > 
because the Jew is undergoing a process of change; be- 
cause religious, political, social, and economic condi 
‘ions are likewise changing; but above all, because anti 
semitism is one of the last, though most long lived, 
manifestations of that old spirit of reaction and narrow } 
conservatism, which is vainly attempting to arrest the! 
onward ovement of the Revolution. 


THE END. 


— 376 — 


CONTENTS. 


Prela Cee acy ieccns co crehe ere waa eee Oo aA De ines Wee 


1. 
GENERAL CAUSES OF ANTISEMITISM. 


Exclusiveness.—The Political and Religious Cult.—Jehovah 


The 


and the Law.—Civil and Religious Regulations.—Jew- 
ish Colonies—The Talmud.—The Chosen People Doc- 
trine.—Jewish Pride.—Separation from the Nations.— 
Pollution.—The Pharisees and the Rabbinites—The 
Faith, Tradition and Secular Science.—The Triumph of 
the Talmudists—Jewish Patriotism.—The Mystic Fa- 
therland.—The Restoration of the Kingdom of Israel.— 
Therlsolation-orathevwew ee ae saee or ore toe nee 


II. 

ANTI-JUDAISM IN ANTIQUITY. 
Hykos.—Haman.—Antisemitism in Ancient Society.— 
In Egypt, Manetho, Chaeremon, Lysimachus.—Anti- 
semitism at Alexandria.—The Stoics: Posidonius, Ap- 
ollonius Molo.—Apion, Josephus and Philo.—‘‘Treatise 
Against the Jews,” the “Contra Apionem,” and the 
‘Legation to Caius.”—The Jews at Rome.—Roman An- 
tisemitism.—Cicero, Disciple of Apion, and Pro Flacco. 
Persius, Ovid and Petronius.—Pliny, Suetonius and 
Juvenal.—Seneca and the Stoics.——Government Meas- 
ures.—Antisemitism at Antioch and in Ionia.—Anti- 
semitism: and -ANtiChTISti9NILY.sc.c< 9 s.ctucrces hve ceca tes 


WE 


coe | 


ANTI-JUDAISM IN CHRISTIAN ANTIQUITY FROM 


THE FOUNDATION OF THE CHURCH 
OF CONSTANTINE. 


The Church and the Synagogue.—Jewish Privileges and the 


First Christians.—Jewish Hostility —Judaic Patriot- 
ism.—Christian Proselytism and the Rabbis.—Attacks 
upon Christianity—The Apostates and Maledictions.— 
Stephen and James.—Jewish Influence Contested.— 
Christianity Among the Pagans and Among the Jews. 
—Peter and Paul.—Judaizing Heresies —The Ebion- 
ites, the Elkasaites, the Nazarenes, the Quartodecimans. 
Gnosticism and Jewish Alexandrinism.—Simon the 
Magician, the Nicolaites and Cerinthus.—First Apos- 


— 377 — 


PAGE. 
tolic Scriptures and the Tendencies of the Judaizing.— 
The Epistles to the Colossians and Ephesians, the Pas- 
torals, the Second Epistle of Peter, the Epistle of Jude, 
the Apocalypse.—The Epistle to Barnabas, the Seven 
Letters of Ignatius of Antioch.—Christian Apologists 
and Jewish Exegesis.—The Letter to Diognetus.—The 
Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs.—Justin and the 
Dialogue with Tryphon.—Aristo of Pella and the Dia- 
logue of Jason with Papiscus.—Christian Expansion 
and Jewish Proselytism.—Rivalries and Hatred; Per- 
secutions ; The Case of Polycarp.—The Polemics.—The 
Bible, the Septuagint, Aquilla’s Version and the Hex- 
apla.—Origen and Rabbi Simlai—Abbahu of Czsarea 
and the Physician Jacob the Minzan.—The Contra Cel- 
sum and Jewish Ridicule——Theological Anti-Judaism. 
—Tertullian and De Adversus Iudaeos.—Cyprian and 
The Three Books Against the Jews.—Minucius Felix.— 
Commodian and Lactantius.—Constantine and the Tri- 
UMP cOLethe OHULCH i shee aise eee hic ee 2) eeu) wcrsisie ss ataiac oye 42 


lV: 
ANTISEMITISM FROM CONSTANTINE TO THE 
EIGHTH CENTURY. 

The Church Triumphant.—The Decadence of Judaism.— 
The Passover and the Judaizing Heresies.—The Council 
of Nicaea.—Transformation of Theological Anti-Juda- 
ism.—Conclusion of Apologetics.—The Anti-Judaism of 
the Fathers and Clergy.—Abuse.—Hosius, Pope Sylves- 
ter, Eusebius of Cesarea, Gregory of Nyssa and St. 
Augustine.—St. Ambrose, St. Jerome, and St. Cyril 
of Jerusalem.—St. John Chrysostom.—Ecclesiastical 
Writers.—The Edict of Milan and the Jews.—Jewish 
and Christian Proselytism.—The Jews, the Church, and 
the Christian Emperors.—Influence of the Church 
upon Imperial Legislation—Roman- Laws.—Vexatious 
Treatment of the Jews.—Popular Movements.—The 
Defense of the Jews, Their Revolts.—Isaac of Sep- 
phoris and Natrona.—Benjamin of Tiberias and the 
Conquest of Palestine—Julian the Apostate and the 
Jewish Nationality—The Jews Among the Nations.— 
Anti-Judaism Becomes General.—In Persia.—The Magi, 
the Jewish Teach. s and Jewish Academies.—In Ara- 
bia.—Influence of the Jews in Yemen.—Victory of 
Mohammedanism and Persecution of the Jews.—Spain 
and the Visigothic Laws.—The Burgundians.—The 


PAGE. 
Franks and Roman Legislation—Canon Law, the 
Councils, and Judaism.—The Condition and Attitude 
of the: Jewsi——Catholicisms. -os.0ce veins teieen eee one 62 


Ve 
ANTI-JUDAISM FROM THE EIGHTH CENTURY TO 
THE REFORMATION. 

Expansion and Christianity.—Diffusion of the Jews Among 
the Nations.—Constitution of the Nationalities.—The 
Role of the Jews in Society.—The Jews and Commerce. 
—Gold and the Jews.—The Love of Gold and Business 
Acquired by the Jews.—The Jew as Colonist and Emi- 
grant.—The Church and Usury.—The Birth of Patron- 
age and Wage-System.—Transformation of Property.— 
The Economic Revolution and the Quest of Gold.—The 
Instinct of Domination.—Gold and Jewish Exclusivism. 
Maimonides and Observation.—Solomon of Montpellier. 
—Ben-Adret, Asher ben Yechiel, and Jacob Tibbon.— 
The Moreh Nebukhim.—Intellectual and Moral Abase- 
ment of the Jews.—The Talmud.—Influence of this 
Abasement on the Social Position of the Jews.—Trans- 
formation of Anti-Judaism.—Social Causes; Religious 
Causes ; Their Combination.—The People and the Jews. 
—The Pastoureaux, the Jacques and the Armleders.— 
The Kings and the Jews.—The Monks and Anti-Juda- 
ism.—Pierre de Cluny, John of Capitrano, and Berna- 
dinus of Feltre—The Church and Theological Anti- 
Judaism.—Christianity and Mohammedanism.—The Al- 
bigenses, the Heretics of Orleans, the Pasagians.— 
Heresies and Judaization—The Hussites.—The Inqui- 
sition—The Bourgeoisie and the Jews.—Ecclesiastic 
and Civil Legislation Against the Jews.—Controversies 
and Condemnation of the Talmud.—Vexations.—Expul- 
sions.—Massacres.—The Condition of the Jews and of 
the People.—The Relativity of the Jewish Sufferings.— 
The Reformation and the Renaissance.............-- §1 


Wile 
ANTI-JUDAISM FROM THE TIME OF THE REFORMA- 
TION TILL THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
Position of the Jews at the Beginning of the Sixteenth Cen- 
tury.—Defeat of the Moors.—Banishment from Spain.— 
Softening of the Manners.—The Last Persecutions.— 
The Inquisition in Portugal—The Renaissance and the 
Reformation of the Church.—The Attacks upon the 


— 379 —~ 


PAGE. 
Supremacy of Rome.—The Humanists and the Talmud. 
—Reuchlin and Pfefferkorn.—The Reformation and the 
Jewish Spirit—The Bible-—Luther and the Jews.— 
Transformation of the Social and the Religious Ques- 
tion.—The Peasant Wars.—The Jews No Longer the 
Chief Enemies of the Church.—The Christian State.— 
Catholicism, the Reformed and the Jews.—The Popes 
and Judaism.—Measures Against the Talmud and Con- 
versions.—Anti-Jewish Legislation.—Molestations and 
Outrages.—Dogmatice Anti-Judaism.—The Recalling of 
the Jews.—The Jews of Europe in the Eighteenth Cen- 
tury.—The Jews in the Netherlands, England, Poland, 
Turkey.—The Portuguese Jews in France.—The Intel- 
lectual and Moral Condition of the Jews.—Kabbalism 
and Messianism.—Sabbatai Zevi and Franck.—The 
Mystic Sects: the Chassidim and New-Chassidim, the 
Doumeh and the Trinitarians.—Talmudism.—Joseph 
Caro and the Schulchan Aruch; the Pilpul—ZJewish 
Reaction Against the 'Talmud.—Mardochee-Kolkos, 
Uriel, Acosta, Spinoza.—Mendelssohn, the Meassef and 
the Jewish Emancipation—Humanitarian Philosophy 
and the Jews.—The Social State and the Jews.—The 
Economic and the Political Objections—Maury and 
Clermont-Tonnerre; Rewbel and Gregoire.—The Revo- 
lution—The Appearance of the Jews in Society...... 123 


VII. 

ANTI-JUDAIC LITERATURE AND THE PREJUDICES. 
Anti-Judaism of the Pen and Its Forms.—Theological Anti- 
Judaism.—The Transformation of Christian Apologet- 
ics.—Judaization and Its Enemies.—Anselm of Canter- 
bury, Isidore of Seville—Pierre de Blois——Alain de 
Lille—The Study of Jewish Books.—Raymond de 
Penaforte and the Dominicans.—Raymund Martin and 
the Pugio Fidei.—Nicholas de Lyra and His Influence. 
Anti-Jewish Theological Literature and the Conver- 
sions.—Nicholas de Cusa.—The Converted Jews and 
Their Role——Paul de Santa Maria, Alfonso of Vallado- 
lid.—Anti-Talmudism and the Converts: Pfefferkorn.— 
The Controversies Over the Talmud and the Jewish 
Religion.—Controversies of Paris, Barcelona and Tor- 
tosa.—Nicholas Donin, Pablo Christiani and Geronimo 
de Santa Fe.—The Eztractiones Talmut.—Social Anti- 
Judaism.—Agobard, Amolon, Peter the Venerable, Si- 
mon Maiol.—Polemic Anti-Judaism.—Alonzo da Spina. 


— 380 — 


PAGE. 
—Le Livre de VAlboraique—Pierre de Lancre.— 
Francisco de Torrejoncillo and the Centinela Contra 
Judios.—Polemic Anti-Judaism and the Prejudices.— 
The Jews and the Accursed Races.—Jews, Templars and 
Sorcerers.—Ritual Murder.—The Defense of the Jews. 
—Jacob ben Ruben, Moses Cohen of Tordesillas, Shem- 
Tob ben Isaac Shaprut.—Jewish Polemic Literature in 
Spain in the Fifteenth Century.—Anti-Christianity.— 
Chasdai Crescas and Joseph Ibn Shem Tob.—The At- 
tacks Against the New Testament.—The Nizzachon and 
The Book of Joseph the Zealot.—The Toldoth Jesho.— 
Attacks Against the Apostates.—Isaac Pulgar, Don 
Vidal Ibn Labi—Transformation of Scriptural Anti- 
Judaism in the Seventeenth Century.—The Converters. 
—The Hebraizers and the Exegetists: Buxtorf and 
Richard Simon.—Wagenseil, Voetius, Bartolocci.— 
Eisenmenger.—John Dury.—The Relationship and 
Similarity of Anti-Jewish Works.—The Imitators.— 
The Ancient Literary Anti-Judaism and the Modern 
Antisemitism.—Their Affinities...........02ecee eevee 147 


VIII. 
MODERN LEGAL ANTI-JUDAISM. 
Emancipated Judaism.—The Position of the Jews in Society. 
—Usury and the Affairs in Alsace.—Napoleon and the 
Administrative Organization of the Jewish Religion.— 
The Great Sanhedrin.—The Restrictive Laws and the 
Progressive Liberation in France-—The Emancipation 
in the Netherlands.—Emancipation in Italy and Ger- 
many.—The Anti-Napoleonic Reaction and the Jews.— 
The Revival of Anti-Jewish Legislation.—Popular 
Movements.—Emancipation in England.—In Austria.— 
The Revolution of 1848 and the Jews.—The End of Le- 
gal Anti-Judaism in the West.—Hastern Anti-Judaism. 
—The Jews in Roumania.—The Russian Jews.—The 
Persecutions.—The Social Question and the Religious 
Questions es Soest ei elo ae aes 178 


cx. 
MODERN ANTISEMITISM AND ITS LITERATURE. 
The Emancipated Jew and the Nations.—The Jews and the 
Economic Revolution.—The Bourgeoisie and the Jews. 
—The Transformation of Anti-Judaism.—Anti-Judaism 
and Antisemitism.—Instinctive Anti-Judaism and Anti- 
semitism of the Reason.—Legal Anti-Judaism and Anti- 


— 381 — 


PAGE. 
semitism of the Pen.—Classification of the Antisemitic 
Literature.—Christian Antisemitism and the Anti- 
Judaism of the Middle Ages.—Anti-Talmudism.—Gou- 
genot de Mousseaux, Chiarini, Rohling.—Christian- 
Socialist Antisemitism.—Barruel, Eckert, Don Des- 
champs.—Chabeauty.—Edouard Drumont and tbe Pas- 
tor Stoecker.—Economic Antisemitism.—Fourier and 
Proudhon; Toussenel, Capefigue, Otto Glaguu.—Ethno- 
logical and National Antisemitism.—Hegelianism and 
the Race Idea.—W. Marr, Treitschke, Schoenerer.— 
Metaphysical Antisemitism. — Schopenhauer. — Hegel 
and the Hegelian Extreme Left.—Max Stirner.—Duhr- 
ing, Nietzsche and Anti-Christian Antisemitism.—Rey- 
olutionary Antisemitism.—Gustave Tridon.—The Com- 
plaints of the Antisemites, and the Causes of Anti- 
OTT EASTIN os c0 0c ciepece ele ie oe reie tele orate ashes io Sve aha, croL ore foie aie) = 204 


eS 
THE RACE. 

The Ethnologic Grievance.—The Inequality of Races.— 
Semites and Aryans.—Aryan Superiority.—The Strug- 
gle of Semites and aryans.—The Semitic Share in the 
So-called Aryan Civilizations.—The Semitic Coloniza- 
tion.—The First Years of the Christian Era and the 
Judeo-Christians.—The Jewish Elements in the Euro- 
pean Nations.—The Idea of Race Among the Jews.— 
Jewish Superiority——The Origins of the Jewish Race. 
—Foreign Elements in the Jewish Race.—Jewish 
Proselytism.—In Pagan Antiquity.—After the Chris- 
tian Era.—The Uralo-Altaic Infiltrations in the Jewish 
Race.—The Khazars and the Peoples of the Caucasus. 
—Different Varieties of Jews.—Dolichocephals and 
Brachycephals. — Ashkenazim and Sephardim. — The 
Jews of China, India and Abyssinia.—Modification 
Through Surroundings and Language.—Jewish Unity. 
mm NATION AIIEY o:arorere. alerccteret cise aisle: ote lasso bi wince larsyoners aleenees 225 


5 GE 
NATIONALISM AND ANTISEMITISM. 

The Jews in the World.—Race and Nation.—Are the Jews a 
Nation?—The Midst, the Laws, the Customs.—The Re- 
ligion and the Rites.—The Language and Literature.— 
The Jewish Spirit—Does the Jew Believe in His Na- 
tionality?—-The Restoration of the Jewish Empire.— 
Jewish Chauvinism.—The Jew and the Strangers to 


— 38 — 


PAGE. 
His Law.—Is the Talmud Anti-Social?—Once and 
' Now.—The Permanence of Prejudices.—Jewish Exclu- 
siveness and Persistence of the Type.—The Principle of 
Nationalities in the Nineteenth Century.—In Germany 
and Italy.—In Austria, in Russia and Hastern Europe. 
Pangermanism and Panslavism.—The Idea of National- 
ity, the Jew and Antisemitism.—The Heterogeneous 
Elements in the Nations.—Elimination or Absorption. 
—wNational Egoism.—Preservation or Transformation. 
—The Tow Tendencies.—Patriotism and Humanita- 
rianism.—Nationalism, Internationalism and Antisem- 
itism.—Jewish Cosmopolitanism and the Idea of Fa- 

therland.—The Jews and the Revolution............ 248 


Sole 
THE REVOLUTIONARY SPIRIT IN JUDAISM. 
Communism and Revolution.—The Jewish Agitation.—The 
Optimism and Eudaemonism of Israel—The Theories 
of Life and Death.—Immortality of the Soul and Res- 
ignation.—Materialism and Hatred of Injustice-—The 
Contract Idea in Jewish Theology.—The Idea of Jus- 
tice—The Prophets and Justice—The Return from 
Babylon, the Hbionim and the Anavim.—The Concep- 
tion of Divinity—Divine Authority and Government on 
Earth.—The Zealots and Anarchism.—Human Equal- 
ity —The Rich Man and Evil.—The Poor Man and 
Good.—Yahwehism and Liberty.—Free Will, Human 
Reason and Divine Power.—Jewish Individualism.— 
Jewish Subjectivity and the Feeling of Self.—Hebraic 
Idealism.—The Idea of Justice, the Idea of Equality, 
the Idea of Liberty, and Their Possible Realization.— 
Messianic Times.—The Messiah and Revolution.—The 
Revolutionary Instinct and Talmudism.—The Modern 
Jens and: Revolutions <5 sao ns cise ea er 275 


XIII. 

THE JEW AS A FACTOR IN THE TRANSFORMATION 
OF SOCIETY.— POLITICAL AND RELIGIOUS 
CAUSES OF ANTISEMITISM. 

The Jew as a Revolutionist—The Jews of the Middle Ages 
and the Spirit of Skepticism.—Jewish Rationalism and 
Christianity—The Jews and Secret Societies —The 
Role Played by the ews in the French Revolution and in 
the Upheavals of the Nineteenth Century.—The Jews 
and Socialism.—Political, Social and Religious Changes 


— 383 — 


PAGE. 
at Work in Present-day Society—The Grievances of 
the Conservative Elements and Antisemitism.—The Jew 
as a Menace to Public Order and a Solvent of Society. 
—The Judaization of Christian Nations and the Decay 
of Faith.—Is the Jew Still Anti-Christian?—The Per- 
sistence of Anti-Jewish Prejudices.—Ritual Murder.— 
The Jews and the Talmud.—The Synagogue and the 
Spirit of Religious Indifferentism Among the Jews.— 
The Emancipated Jew.—Liberalism, Anti-Clericalism 
and the Jews.—Judaism and the Christian State.-—The 
Modern Struggle.-—The Spirit of Conservatism versus 
the Spirit of Revolution.—Tradition and Change.— 


Antisemitism in an Age of Transition—The Jew in 


NGClOL Vi iiecht mo uhermee bind ticle rare Ce wa ee Deine 297 


XIV. 


THE ECONOMIC CAUSES OF ANTISEMITISM. 


Economic Antisemitism.—The Case Against the Jew.—The 
Moral Charge.—The Dishonest Jew.—Jewish Astute- 
ness and Bad Faith.—The Corrupting Influence of the 
Talmud.—Restrictive Legislation and Jewish Fraud.— 
Mercantilism and Usury as Causes of Degradation.— 
Money and the Decline of Morality —The Economic 
Charge.—The Jew and Present Social Conditions.— 
The Importance of the Jews in Capitalistic Society.— 
The Jew in Finance and in Industry.—The Jew as 
the Possessor of Capital.— Disadvantages Under 
Which the Jew Labors Under Present Conditions. 
—The Jewish Proletarians in Europe and America. 
—The Jews of the Middle Class—The Relative Su- 
premacy of the Jew.—Causes of Such Supremacy.— 
Jewish Solidarity versus Middle Class Individualism.— 
The Jewish Brotherhood.—Its Origin and Antiquity.— 
The Synagogues.—The Middle Ages.—The Ghettoes. 
—Modern Times.—The Kahal in the Countries of the 
East.—Minorities in Western Europe and the Solidar- 
ity of Classes.—Opposition Between Different Forms of 
Capital as a Cause of Antisemitism.—Agricultural Cap- 
ital versus Industrial Capital—The Jewish Stock- 
broker and the Small Trader.—Competition and anti- 
semitism.—Competition in the Ranks of Capital and in 
the Labor Market.—Grievances Against the Jews and 
Economic Antisemitism.—Antisemitism and the Intes- 
tine: Struggles of Capitalice: coc cee 5.0.4 oe etree a 830 


— 384 — 


PAGE. 


XV. 
THE FATEH OF ANTISEMITISM. 

The Causes of Antisemitism.—Antisemtism of the Present 
Day and Anti-Judaism in Former Times.—The Perma- 
nent Cause.—The Jew as a Stranger and the Manifes- 
tations of Antisemitism.—The Jew and Assimilation. 
—The Jew and His Surroundings.—Modification of the 
Jewish Type.—The Disappearance of External Charac- 
teristics —The Disappearance of Internal Chargcteris- 
tics—The Religion of the Synagogue at the Present 
Day.—The Decline and Fall of Talmudism.—The Jew 
an Assimilated Element.—The Disappearance of Relig- 
ious Prejudices Against the Jew.—The Decay of the 
Spirit of Particularism and National Exclusiveness.— 
The Progress of Cosmopolitanism.—Antisemitism and 
Economic Change.—The Struggle Against Capital.— 
The Capitalist Alliance.—Capital and Revolution.—The 
Antisemites as Adversaries of Revolution.—The End of 
DAN EISOMIIEISI Ais ice cae Bost ous adce oo ateca etertel bi guts he whens arousians 356 


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